Cm  <£pocf)S  of  Ctjurcf) 


ToL  YIL 


Ten  Epochs  of  Church  History 

edited  by 

JOHN  FULTON,  D.D.,  LLJX 

A  series  of  hand-books,  giving  a  popular, 
comprehensive  and  authoritative  church 
history.  Price,  $2.00  each,  net. 


Arrangement  of  Volumes 

X.  The    Apostolic    Age.      By    J.    Vernon 
Bartlet,  M.A. 

2.  The  Post-Apostolic  Age.      By    Lucius 

Waterman,  D.D.,  with  an  introduction 
by  Rt.  Rev.  H.  C.  Potter,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

3.  The  Ecumenical  Councils.     By  Prof.  W. 

P.    Du  Bose,  with  an  introduction  by 
Rt.  Rev.  T.  F.  Gailor,  D.D. 

4.  The  Age  of  Charlemagne.      By   Prof. 

Charles  L.  Wells,  Ph.D. 

5.  The    Age    of    Hildebrand.       By    Prof. 

Marvin  R.  Vincent,  D.D. 

6.  The  Age  of  the  Crusades.     By  J.  M. 

Ludlow,  D.D. 

7.  The  Age  of  the  Renaissance.     By  Paul 

van   Dyke,   with    an    introduction    by 
Henry  van  Dyke,  D.D. 

8.  The  Age  of  the  Great  Western  Schism. 

By  Clinton  Locke,  D.D. 

9.  The   Reformation.      By   Prof.   Williston 
Walker,  Ph.D.,  D.D. 

10.   The  Anglican    Reformation.     By   Prof. 
William  Clark,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  D.C.L, 


£en  (Specie  of 


IHE_ 

AGE  OF  THE  RENASCENCE 

AN  OUTLINE  SKETCH  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  PAPACY 

FROM  THE  RETURN  FROM  AVIGNON  TO  THE 

SACK  OF  ROME  (1377-1527) 

BY 

PAUL  VANJ  DYKE 

WITH   AN    INTRODUCTION   BY 

HENRY  VAN  DYKE 


1912 


Copyright,  1896-1897,  by 
THE  CHRISTIAN  LITERATURE  Co0 


AN  INTRODUCTION 

BY 

HENRY  VAN  DYKE 


2231839 


AN  INTRODUCTION. 


JHEN  the  writing  of  this  book  was  pro- 
posed to  me,  some  years  ago,  I  under- 
took it  with  alacrity,  on  account  of  the 
interest  in  the  subject  which  I  had  long 
cherished,  and  yet  with  some  grave  mis- 
givings lest  the  pressure  of  other  work,  already  prom- 
ised, but  not  performed,  should  rob  me  of  the  time 
needed  to  accomplish  this  task  with  thoroughness  and 
precision.  For  I  knew  the  Age  of  the  Renascence 
well  enough,  through  previous  studies  from  the  lit- 
erary, artistic,  and  philosophic  points  of  view,  to  see 
that  a  man  could  not  hope  to  make  even  an  outline 
sketch  of  the  Church  in  this  complex  period  without 
much  labor  and  steady  thought. 

The  very  brevity  of  the  book  proposed  was  an 
added  difficulty.  It  is  hard  to  be  concise  without  be- 
coming inaccurate.  To  make  the  results  of  study  clear 
when  the  lack  of  space  compels  the  omission  of  its 
processes ;  to  justify  conclusions  without  giving  au- 
thorities; to  condense  volumes  of  reading  into  a 
chapter  of  writing,  and  that  chapter  again  into  a 
paragraph,  and  that  paragraph  into  a  single  sentence ; 
to  select  the  characters  of  men  who  really  embody 


viii  An  Introduction. 

the  tendencies  of  their  age ;  and  to  find  adjectives 
which  shall  be  equivalent  to  biographies,  distinct  and 
vivid,  without  being  unjust  or  violent; — in  short,  to 
draw  a  convincing  picture,  not  of  a  single  generation 
only,  but  of  a  movement  which  pervaded  many  gen- 
erations and  races,  and  to  do  this  within  the  compass 
of  a  few  hundred  pages,  is  an  enterprise  not  to  be 
effected  without  serious  toil. 

Facing  such  a  task  as  this,  realizing  its  difficulties 
more  and  more  sharply  as  the  plan  of  the  book  took 
shape,  and  feeling  at  the  same  time  the  ever-increas- 
ing demands  of  other  duties  and  literary  engage- 
ments, I  sought  and  gratefully  welcomed  the  consent 
of  my  brother  to  make  this  volume  a  joint  labor  of 
fraternal  authorship.  Together  we  surveyed  the 
field,  marked  out  its  limitations,  rejoiced  in  the  rich- 
ness of  its  promise,  and  groaned  a  little,  yet  not  de- 
spondently, at  the  prospect  of  the  many  hard  places 
and  obstacles. 

On  this  preliminary  journey  of  exploration  we 
found  ourselves  in  the  full  harmony  of  intellectual 
comradeship.  The  purpose,  the  method,  the  guiding 
principles  of  such  a  book  as  we  wished  to  write 
seemed  to  us  plain  and  self-evident.  Abstract  theo- 
ries of  the  nature  of  the  Church  troubled  us  little. 
Special  pleading  for  or  against  the  Papacy  disturbed 
us  even  less.  The  question  of  absorbing  interest  was 
not,  What  ought  the  Church  to  be  in  a  correct  scheme 
of  doctrine?  but,  What  was  the  Church  in  the  actual 
unfolding  of  human  life?  What  part  did  the  eccle- 
siastical institution  play  in  the  conflicts  of  the  Renas- 
cence ?  What  did  the  idea  of  the  Papacy  mean  as  a 


An  Introduction.  ix 

positive  force,  cooperating  or  conflicting  with  the 
other  forces  of  the  age  ?  How  far  did  it  affect,  and 
how  far  was  it  affected  by,  the  influences  which  pro- 
duced the  great  awakening  of  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries?  What  was  the  real  relation  of 
the  Church  as  an  organization  to  Christianity  as  a 
spiritual  life?  How  potently  did  that  spiritual  life 
make  itself  felt  in  the  progress  of  the  world  ? 

The  answer  to  these  questions  was  not  a  matter  of 
theory,  but  of  fact. 

We  felt  sure  that  it  was  not  to  be  found  in  the 
books  of  dogmatic  theology  or  ecclesiastical  history, 
nor  in  the  decrees  of  councils,  nor  in  the  bulls  of 
Popes,  nor  in  the  theses  of  reformers — except  in  so 
far  as  all  of  these  were  veritable  details  in  the  great 
panorama  of  life.  Their  value  lay,  not  in  what  they 
professed  or  claimed,  but  in  what  they  actually  rep- 
resented. They  were  worth  precisely  what  they 
expressed,  reduced  to  the  terms  of  reality. 

The  answer  to  our  questions  must  be  sought  chiefly 
in  the  character  of  men  and  the  history  of  nations. 
The  type  of  ecclesiastical  society  produced  by  the 
contests  between  Pope  and  Antipope,  the  fashion  of 
moral  amelioration  effected  by  the  Reforming  Coun- 
cils, the  style  of  humanity  in  which  the  spreading  tree 
of  Humanism  bore  its  fruit — these  were  the  things 
which  we  were  drawn  to  study,  and  from  which  we 
hoped  to  derive  some  real  and  definite  knowledge,  to 
clarify  our  conception  of  the  past,  to  broaden  our 
judgment  of  the  present,  and  to  enlighten  our  vision 
of  the  future. 

But  as  the  work  proceeded  it  became  evident  that 


An  Introduction. 


the  lion's  share  of  it  must  fall  to  my  brother.  And 
of  this,  for  several  reasons,  I  was  very  glad;  chiefly 
because  I  was  sure  that  his  leisure,  his  industry,  and 
his  long  previous  studies  in  the  special  department  of 
ecclesiastical  history  fitted  him  for  the  more  careful 
and  complete  accomplishment  of  our  design.  More- 
over, there  was  a  mortgage  of  other  engagements, 
particularly  in  connection  with  the  Lectures  on 
Preaching  at  Yale  University,  in  1896,  which  more 
than  covered  all  my  time  and  strength. 

To  his  hands,  therefore,  the  final  execution  of  our 
plan  was  committed.  The  collection  of  materials,  the 
workmanship,  the  filling  in  of  the  outline,  are  all  his. 
Such  consultations  as  we  have  held  in  regard  to  the 
work  are  not  to  be  considered  as  in  any  sense  edi- 
torial or  executive.  The  book  as  it  stands  belongs 
altogether  to  him.  Whatever  credit  it  deserves  for 
scholarship,  for  clearness,  for  candor  (and  I  hope  that 
is  not  small),  must  be  given  entirely  to  him. 

For  myself,  it  remains  only  to  add  this  brief  intro- 
duction, which  I  gladly  do  at  his  request,  in  order 
that  the  formative  ideas  of  the  work  may  not  be  mis- 
understood, nor  its  limitations  overlooked. 

It  is  a  serious  misfortune  for  a  book  when  people 
come  to  the  reading  of  it  without  a  perception  of  what 
it  offers  to  them.  But  it  is  a,  still  greater  misfortune 
when  they  come  with  an  expectation  of  finding  what 
it  was  never  meant  to  offer;  for  in  the  latter  case 
they  are  inclined  to  lay  upon  the  author  the  blame 
of  a  disappointment  which  belongs  more  properly  to 
the  reader,  and  to  criticise  as  defects  those  necessary 
omissions  which  belong  to  a  consistent  plan. 


An  Introduction. 


Let  it  be  understood,  then,  at  the  outset,  that  this 
was  not  intended  to  be  a  small  church  history  in  the 
technical  sense,  nor  even  a  fragment  of  a  larger 
church  history.  The  plan  of  the  book  was  of  a  dif- 
ferent nature.  It  was  to  give  as  graphic  a  view  as 
possible  of  a  single  act  in  the  great  life-drama  of 
humanity. 

This  act  was  the  crisis  of  the  Papal  Church  in  that 
period  of  intellectual  and  social  reconstruction  called 
the  Age  of  the  Renascence,  which  transformed  the 
mediaeval  into  the  modern  world. 

The  scene  opens  with  the  return  of  the  Pope  from 
Avignon  to  Rome  in  1377.  It  closes  with  the  sack 
of  Rome  by  the  Spanish-  German  army,  under  the 
Due  de  Bourbon,  in  1527.  Between  these  two  points 
lies  the  dramatic  story  of  a  corrupt  ecclesiastical 
body  stubbornly  resisting  all  attempts  at  reform  from 
within  and  without,  and  at  last  succumbing  to  the 
pressure  of  great  social  and  moral  world-forces,  which 
it  was  too  prejudiced  to  comprehend,  too  proud  to 
acknowledge,  except  for  brief  intervals,  and  too  im- 
potent to  withstand,  save  with  the  fatal  obstinacy  of 
inherent  weakness. 

In  sketching  this  story  it  was  not  intended  to  give 
full  details  of  the  various  events  and  the  manifold 
conflicts  between  nations  and  dynasties  and  parties 
and  schools  which  entered  into  it.  The  exigencies 
of  space  would  not  permit  this,  even  if  the  nature  of 
the  plan  demanded  it.  Nor  was  it  intended  that  the 
book  should  present  references  and  lists  of  authori- 
ties to  support  its  conclusions.  Much  as  this  might 
have  been  desired,  it  would  be  manifestly  impossible 


xii  An  Introduction. 

in  such  a  brief  compass.  Not  even  all  of  the  great 
features  of  the  Age  of  the  Renascence  could  be  in- 
cluded. The  development  of  university  life  has  been 
barely  touched;  the  artistic  revival  has  been  alto- 
gether passed  over — to  my  own  regret,  but  doubtless 
for  good  reasons. 

This  wholesale  process  of  omission  was  necessary 
in  order  to  make  room  on  the  small  canvas  for  the 
picture  which  we  had  in  mind.  Details  which  were 
not  essential  must  be  left  out,  lest  they  should  ob- 
scure the  vital  features.  A  process  of  negative  ex- 
aggeration must  be  used  to  arrive  at  a  clear  view  of 
the  positive  truth. 

It  would  be  better,  for  example,  to  omit  the  ar- 
ticles of  many  treaties,  and  the  chronicles  of  many 
dynastic  wars,  and  the  records  of  many  synods  and 
councils,  than  to  fail  to  give  a  vivid  presentment  of 
such  men  as  Petrarch,  Boccaccio,  Poggio,  and  Filelfo, 
in  Italy;  Pierre  d'Ailly,  John  of  Gerson,  and  Faber 
Stapulensis,  in  France ;  Wiclif,  Colet,  More,  and 
Tyndale,  in  England ;  Reuchlin  and  Ulrich  von  Hut- 
ten,  in  Germany ;  and  Erasmus,  that  great  intellec- 
tual cosmopolite.  These  men,  and  others  like  them, 
were,  in  fact,  the  makers  of  a  new  world  in  letters,  in 
morals,  in  manners.  It  is  impossible  to  know  any- 
thing about  the  Age  of  the  Renascence  without  get- 
ting at  least  a  glimpse  of  these  men  as  they  lived  and 
moved  and  had  their  intellectual  being. 

Nor  can  the  varying  and  tragic  fortunes  of  the 
Papacy  during  that  eventful  period  be  understood 
without  a  clear,  though  swift,  glance  into  the  interior 
life  and  personality  of  such  popes  as  Nicholas  V.,  the 


An  Introduction.  xiii 

first  Humanist  Pontiff;  Pius  II.,  the  clever  litterateur 
and  diplomatist;  Sixtus  IV.,  the  terrible  man  with 
many  nephews ;  Alexander  VI.,  the  Pontifex Maximus 
of  gallantry,  whose  patron  goddess  was  Venus ;  Julius 
II.,  who  ruled  and  fought  under  the  sign  of  Mars; 
and  Leo  X.,  whose  tutelary  deity  was  Pallas  Athene. 
From  the  first  conception  of  this  book  it  was  intended 
to  give  more  space  to  the  graphic  depiction  of  these 
and  other  like  typical  figures  than  to  the  formal 
narration  of  what  is  ordinarily  called  ecclesiastical 
history. 

But  it  was  foreseen  at  the  outset  that  the  actors 
in  the  drama  would  be  found  divided,  by  the  crisis 
of  events,  into  two  classes,  antagonistic,  irreconcilable, 
and  often  apparently  incapable  of  understanding  each 
other.  And  so,  in  fact,  it  has  proved  to  be  in  the 
writing  of  the  book. 

Here  they  stand,  distinctly  marked — the  two  great 
parties  that  have  always  contended  for  the  guidance 
of  mankind :  the  men  of  institutions,  and  the  men  of 
ideas ;  the  men  whose  supreme  allegiance  binds  them 
to  an  organization,  and  the  men  whose  ultimate  loy- 
alty is  to  the  truth ;  Wiclif  and  Huss  and  Savonarola 
and  Hutten  and  Luther  and  Zwingli,  against  the 
Roman  Curia  and  its  defenders.  Many  of  the  men 
whose  intellectual  sympathies  drew  them  to  the  party 
of  ideas  were  bound  by  the  deeper  links  of  character 
to  the  party  of  institutions.  To  this  class  belong 
Reuchlin  and  Erasmus,  Colet  and  More,  Gerson  and 
d'Ailly,  and  most  of  the  elder  Humanists.  They 
were  too  fond  of  ancient  order,  too  timrd  of  change 
and  confusion  and  possible  misrule,  ever  to  break  with 


xiv  An  Introduction. 

the  Church,  which  obstinately  resisted  the  reforming 
influence  of  ideas.  But  their  personal  hesitations 
were  impotent  to  prevent  the  inevitable  results  of 
their  work.  Reuchlin  might  plead  with  his  nephew 
Melancthon  to  beware  of  friendship  with  the  heret- 
ical Martin  Luther,  but  the  affectionate  solicitation 
went  for  nothing  against  the  irresistible  impulses  of 
an  awakened  reason,  a  new-born  scholarship,  and  a 
liberated  conscience. 

The  younger  Humanists,  almost  to  a  man,  de- 
serted the  party  of  institutions  for  the  party  of 
ideas.  The  Bible  was  set  free  from  the  bondage 
of  tradition  and  given  to  the  common  people — in 
German  by  Luther  (1522),  in  French  by  Faber 
Stapulensis  (1523),  and  in  English  by  William  Tyn- 
dale  (1525).  Thus  the  issue  was  clearly  defined: 
Must  a  man  believe  what  the  Church  teaches,  no 
matter  what  the  Bible  says?  or  must  the  Church 
teach  what  men  really  believe,  reading  the  Bible  anew 
in  the  light  of  reason  and  the  moral  sense  ?  Around 
this  point  the  warfare  of  the  Reformation  was  waged. 
It  was  the  chief  service  of  the  Renascence  as  an  in- 
tellectual and  social  movement  that  it  brought  this 
point  of  irrepressible  conflict  into  distinct  view,  made 
it  plain  and  distinct,  and  produced,  in  the  service  of 
literature  and  philosophy,  the  weapons  which  were  at 
last  used  for  the  emancipation  of  faith. 

In  tracing  the  preliminary  skirmishes  of  this  mighty 
conflict,  and  describing  the  preparation  of  the  arma- 
ment with  which  it  was  to  be  fought,  it  was  intended 
that  this  book  should  be  impartial  without  being  in- 
vertebrate. Our  intention  was  to  lay  aside  prejudices, 


An  Introduction.  xv 

but  not  to  conceal  convictions;  to  do  justice  to  the 
character  of  men  like  Hadrian  of  Corneto,  and  the 
Cardinal  Ximenes,  and  Adrian  VI.,  without  justify- 
ing their  position.  For,  both  in  its  conception  and 
in  its  execution,  this  book  proceeds  from  the  stand- 
point that  ideas  are  above  institutions,  and  that  lib- 
erty of  reason  and  conscience  is  more  precious  than 
orthodoxy  of  doctrine. 

Glancing  forward  over  the  contents  of  the  volume 
as  my  brother  has  written  it,  I  see  that  the  composi- 
tion of  the  picture,  under  his  hands,  has  taken  such 
a  simple  and  natural  form  that  it  may  be  easily  de- 
scribed in  a  few  paragraphs. 

First  we  have  a  brief  review  of  the  three  forces 
which  had  changed  the  face  of  the  world  when  the 
Pope  came  back  to  Rome  from  the  Babylonian  Cap- 
tivity in  France.  The  new  patriotism,  the  new  de- 
mocracy, and  the  new  learning — these  were  the 
equipollent  and  inseparable  factors  of  the  Renascence, 
now  fully  in  action ;  and  with  these  the  Catholic 
Church  had  to  reckon,  if  she  would  maintain  her  su- 
premacy, or  even  her  existence. 

Then  we  have  an  account  of  the  earnest  efforts 
which  were  made  to  reform  the  Church  from  within. 
These  efforts  proceeded  from  four  chief  springs : 

1.  The  revivals  of  religion  in  Italy,  under  the  lead- 
ership of  such  enthusiasts  as  St.  Catherine  of  Siena 
and  Savonarola. 

2.  The  national  movement  for  reform  in  England, 
inspired  by  the  teaching  and  influence  of  Wiclif  and 
the  Lollards. 

3.  The  powerful  after-echo  of  this  movement  in 


xvi  An  Introduction. 

Bohemia,  under  the  guidance  of  John  Huss  and  Je- 
rome of  Prague. 

4.  The  party  of  Conciliar  Supremacy  in  the 
Catholic  Church,  resisting  the  encroachments  of 
Papal  absolution,  and  demanding,  through  men  like 
Gerson  and  d'Ailly,  "  the  reform  of  the  Church  in 
head  and  members." 

At  the  Council  of  Constance  we  see  the  last  two  of 
these  forces  falling  foul  of  each  other;  and  in  the 
stories  of  Huss  and  Savonarola  and  the  followers  of 
Wiclif  we  read  the  fate  of  the  men  who  dreamed  that 
the  Papacy  could  be  reformed  without  the  shedding 
of  blood. 

The  four  movements  for  the  purification  of  the 
Church  from  within  failed  because  they  were  essen- 
tially ecclesiastical.  The  tremendous  momentum  of 
the  corrupt  machine  was  too  great  to  be  checked  by 
any  resistance,  save  one  which  should  have  a  firm 
foothold  outside  of  the  body  to  be  checked,  and  abun- 
dant sources  of  independent  strength.  The  ground 
for  such  a  resistance  was  being  prepared  in  Germany, 
in  France,  and  in  England  during  all  the  years  of 
turmoil  and  shame  and  despair  while  the  Papacy  was 
punishing  the  passionate  endeavors  of  the  best  mem- 
bers of  the  Church  to  reform  it,  and  rewarding  the 
successful  conspiracies  of  its  worst  members  to  dis- 
grace it. 

The  instrument  of  this  preparation  was  the  Re- 
nascence. It  was  not  so  much  a  mechanical  alteration 
of  the  structure  of  human  thought  and  society  as  it 
was  a  chemical  change  in  the  very  elements  of  their 
composition.  It  transformed  the  scattered  fragments 


An  Introduction.  xvii 

of  knowledge  into  the  solid  rock  of  scholarship.  It 
metamorphosed  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  men 
with  the  ardent  heat  of  the  love  of  learning,  and 
crystallized  their  imaginations  by  the  introduction  of 
the  historic  spirit.  It  loosened,  at  least  for  a  time, 
the  solidarity  of  European  Christendom;  but  it 
substituted  for  the  treacherous  debris  of  the  failing 
sentiment  of  universal  brotherhood,  which  no  longer 
afforded  a  trustworthy  footing,  new  points  of  coher- 
ence and  support,  in  the  sentiments  of  nationality 
and  the  patriotic  enthusiasms  which  were  begotten 
and  intensified  by  the  spread  of  historic  knowledge 
and  by  the  increase  of  once  barbarous  countries  in 
wisdom,  wealth,  and  power. 

The  book  traces  this  process — hastily,  of  course, 
and  in  mere  outline,  and  yet,  it  seems  to  me,  with  a 
true  comprehension  of  its  deep  significance  and  far- 
reaching  results.  The  endeavor  of  the  writer  is  not 
to  show  what  the  Reformation  added  to  the  Renas- 
cence; that  is  another  story,  and  belongs  to  a  later 
volume.  But  this  book  is  an  attempt  to  exhibit  what 
the  Renascence  did  for  the  Reformation. 

There  can  be  no  question  whatever,  and  I  think  it 
can  be  seen  from  this  book,  that  the  two  movements 
which  were  actually  crowned  with  some  measure  of 
success  in  the  purification  of  Christian  faith  and  life 
— namely,  the  Protestant  Reformation  under  Luther 
and  Zwingli  and  Calvin,  and  the  Catholic  Reaction  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century — were  both 
the  legitimate  offspring  of  the  Renascence.  If  there 
had  been  no  liberty  of  scholarship  there  never  would 
have  been  an  open  Bible.  If  there  had  been  no  re- 


xviii  An  Introduction. 

vival  of  patriotism  the  Germans  never  would  have 
backed  Luther  against  the  world  to  defend  his  right 
of  interpreting  the  Scriptures. 

And  so  if  the  book  is  to  have  a  lesson  drawn  from 
it,  it  must  be  this :  The  fortunes  of  the  Church  as  an 
institution  depend  upon  the  same  laws  which  God 
has  implanted  in  all  human  society,  and  through  which 
He  continually  manifests  His  presence  and  power. 
There  is  no  ecclesiastical  history  apart  from  secular 
history.  The  Church  which  rests  upon  authority 
alone  must  take  its  chances  with  the  other  dynasties. 
No  appeal  to  the  supernatural  can  shield  its  preten- 
sions from  the  searching  tests  of  reason  and  conscience. 
The  Christianity  which  is  to  survive  and  maintain  its 
claims  in  the  face  of  the  world  must  be  in  harmony 
with  the  primal  moral  forces,  love  of  liberty,  love  of 
truth,  love  of  real  goodness. 

HENRY  VAN  DYKE. 

NEW  YORK,  July  aa,  1897. 


CONTENTS. 


PERIOD  L 

From  the  Return  from  Avignon  to  the  Accession  of  NichoUs  V. 
O377-J447). 

INTRODUCTORY  RETROSPECT. 

FACE 

CHAP.  I. — THE  GROWTH  OF  PATRIOTISM  OR  THE  SENSE  OF 

NATIONALITY i 

CHAP.  II. — NEW  THEORIES  OF  THE  SEAT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

AND  THE  RISING  TIDE  OF  DEMOCRACY 1 1 

CHAP.  III. — THE  NEW  LEARNING — PETRARCH,  THE  PRO- 
TOTYPE OF  THE  HUMANISTS  . .  20 


CHAP.  IV. — THE  CONDITION  IN  WHICH  THE  RETURNING  POPK 
FOUND  ITALY  AND  THE  PATRIMONY  OF  ST.  PETER — THE 
BEGINNING  OF  THE  GREAT  SCHISM — Two  VICARS  OF 
CHRIST  FIGHT  FOR  THE  TIARA 35 

CHAP.  V. — JOHN  WICLIF  OF  ENGLAND,  AND  HIS  PROTEST 
AGAINST  PAPAL  WAR 46 

CHAP.  VI. — POPE  AND  ANTIPOPE — THE  WHITE  PENITENTS 
AT  ROME — THE  SIEGE  OF  AVIGNON — THE  FOLLOWERS  OF 
PETRARCH,  THE  HUMANISTS,  OR  MEN  OF  THE  NEW 

LEARNING 59 

xix 


xx  Contents. 

PAGE 

CHAP.  VII.— ORTHODOX  DEMANDS  FOR  UNION  AND  RE- 
FORM: (i)  CATHERINE  OF  SIENA  AND  THE  ASCETIC  PRO- 
PHETS OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS  ;  (2)  THE  PARTY  OF  CONCILIAR 
SUPREMACY 69 

CHAP.  VIII. — THE  COUNCIL  OF  PISA  MAKES  THE  SCHISM 
TRIPLE — THE  PROTEST  OF  JOHN  Huss  OF  BOHEMIA 79 

CHAP.  IX. — THE  COUNCIL  OF  CONSTANCE  AND  TRIUMPH  OF 
THE  PARTY  OF  CONCILIAR  SUPREMACY:  (i)  THEY  DEPOSE 

THE    POPES    AND    FORCE    UNION;    (2)    THEY   REPUDIATE 

THE  BOHEMIAN  PROTEST  AND  BURN  Huss;  (3)  THEY 
FAIL  TO  DETERMINE  THE  REFORM  OF  THE  CHURCH  IN 
HEAD  AND  MEMBERS 90 

CHAP.  X. — THE  PAPAL  REACTION — THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  THE 
PATRIMONIUM — MARTIN  V.  AND  EUGENIUS  IV.  REESTAB- 
LISH THE  PAPAL  SUPREMACY  WITHOUT  GRANTING  RE- 
FORM— THE  PROTEST  AND  ABORTIVE  SCHISM  OF  THE 
COUNCIL  OF  BASLE in 

CHAP.  XI. — THE  SPREAD  OF  HUMANISM..  .   122 


PERIOD  H. 

From  the  Accession  of  the  First  Humanist  Pope  to  the  French 
Invasion  of  Italy  (J447-J494). 

CHAP.  XII. — NICHOLAS  V.,  THE  FIRST  HUMANIST  POPE, 
MAKES  ROME  THE  HOME  OF  THE  MUSES — THE  WAR  OF 
THE  MONKS  AND  THE  HUMANISTS I$I 

CHAP.  XIII. — CALIXTUS  III.,  THE  OLD  SPANIARD,  .HIS 
FAMILY  PRIDE  AND  HIS  ZEAL  AGAINST  THE  INFIDEL — 
Pius  II.,  THE  CULTURED  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD  WHO  DIED 
A  CRUSADER— PAUL  II.,  THE  SPLENDOR-LOVING  VENE- 
TIAN NEPOT 164 

CHAP.  XIV. — THE  NEW  LEARNING  CROSSES  THE  ALPS — 
ITS  SPREAD  IN  FRANCE — THE  FORERUNNERS  OF  GERMAN 
HUMANISM 176 

CHAP.  XV. —  THE  MAN  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  ON  THE 
THRONE  OF  ST.  PETER — SIXTUS  IV.,  THE  TERRIBLE 193 

CHAP.  XVI. — INNOCENT  VIII.,  THE  SULTAN'S  JAILER — 
ALEXANDER  VI.,  THE  HANDSOME  SPANISH  NEPOT — THE 
FRENCH  INVASION 206 


Contents.  xxi 

PACE 

CHAP.  XVII. —  SAVONAROLA  AND  FREEDOM 317 

PERIOD  EL 
From  the  French  Invasion  to  the  Sack  of  Rome  (J494-J527). 

CHAP.  XVIII.— THE  HOUSEHOLD  OF  ALEXANDER  VI.— THE 
PROPHET  OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS  AND  THE  VICAR  OF  CHRIST  299 

CHAP.  XIX.— THE  FALL  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  BORGIA 248 

CHAP.  XX. — HUMANISM  IN  EUROPE  FROM  THE  ACCESSION 
OF  SlXTUS  IV.  TO  THE  DEATH  OF  ALEXANDER  VI.  (1471- 
1503) — THE  FLORENTINE  ACADEMY  AND  THE  OXFORD 
SCHOOL — FABER  STAPULENSIS  AND  HIS  PUPILS  AT  PARIS 
— JOHN  REUCHLIN  AND  THE  OLDER  HUMANISTS  OF  GER- 
MANY— ERASMUS 262 

CHAP.  XXI. — JULIUS  II.  AND   LEO  X. — THE  NEPHEW  OF 

SlXTUS  IV.  AND  THE  SON  OF  LORENZO  THE  MAGNIFICENT 
BECOME   POPES • 286 

CHAP.  XXII. — TRANSALPINE  HUMANISM  UNDER  JULIUS  AND 
LEO — (i)  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  BOOKS  ABOUT  JOHN 
REUCHLIN  ;  (2)  THE  THREE  DISCIPLES  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHY 
OF  CHRIST;  (3)  THE  PUPILS  OF  FABER  STAPULENSIS;  (4) 
ULRICH  ZWINGLI 302 

CHAP.  XXIII. — THE  COURT  OF  LEO  X. — HUMANISM  IN 
ITALY  AND  SPAIN — THE  THREE  BOY  KINGS 321 

CHAP.  XXIV. — THE  NORTH  LOSES  PATIENCE  WITH  THE 
PAPACY  —  THE  LEADERS  OF  REVOLT  IN  GERMANY, 
SWITZERLAND,  FRANCE,  AND  ENGLAND 339 

CHAP.  XXV. — ADRIAN  VI.,  THE  HONEST  ORTHODOX  EC- 
CLESIASTIC — THE  OLDER  HUMANISTS  OF  THE  NORTH 
STAND  BY  THE  CHURCH — THE  YOUNGER  APPEAL  TO  THE 
NEW  TESTAMENT — CLEMENT  VII.,  THE  HEIR  OF  THE 
MEDICI 356 

CHAP.  XXVI.— THE  SACK  OF  ROME 366 

A  LIST  OF  THE  POPES  AND  ANTIPOPES 379 

A  LIST  OF  THE  HUMANISTS  MENTIONED , 380 


PERIOD  I. 

FROM  THE  RETURN  FROM  AVIGNON  TO  THE 
ACCESSION  OF  NICHOLAS  V.  (1377-1447). 


INTRODUCTORY   RETROSPECT. 

(CHAPTERS  I.,  II.,  III.) 

THE  FORCES  THAT  HAD  CHANGED  THE  CONDI- 
TIONS OF  POWER  DURING  THE  SEVENTY 
YEARS  OF  THE  PAPAL  ABSENCE  FROM  ROME. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  GROWTH    OF    PATRIOTISM   OR   THE   SENSE  OF 
NATIONALITY.  » 

N  the  I  ;th  of  January,  1377,  all  Rome 
was  early  afoot,  and  a  great  crowd 
streamed  across  the  fields  of  Mount 
Aventinus  to  the  gate  of  St.  Paul,  open- 
ing toward  the  sea.  There  the  clergy  of 
the  city  were  gathered  in  festal  array  to  receive  the 
Pope.  Landing  from  his  galley,  which  had  ascended 
the  river  from  Ostia  and  lain  at  anchor  all  night  just 
below  the  great  Basilica  of  St.  Paul  without  the  Walls, 
Gregory  XL  heard  mass,  and  the  festal  procession 
started  to  enter  the  gate.  Two  thousand  men-at- 
arms,  commanded  by  his  nephew,  Raymond,  Vicomte 


The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 


of  Turenne,  guarded  the  gorgeous  train.  Behind  the 
great  banner  of  the  Church,  borne  by  the  gray-haired 
Grand  Master  of  the  Knights  of  Rhodes,  came  the 
Pope,  riding  on  a  splendidly  caparisoned  palfrey  be- 
neath a  baldachin  carried  by  Roman  nobles.  Around 
him  moved  a  glittering  cavalcade  of  cardinals  and 
bishops,  and  a  company  of  white-robed  clowns  and 
tumblers,  the  usual  companions  of  all  stately  proces- 
sions, heralded  his  approach.  In  the  gate  stood  the 
Senator  of  Rome  in  full  armor,  with  the  councillors 
and  captains,  waiting  to  put  into  Gregory's  hands  the 
keys  of  the  city.  As  he  passed  on  his  long  journey 
through  the  fields  and  streets  to  the  other  side  of  the 
circle  of  walls,  the  entire  population  greeted  him  with 
shouts  of  joy.  Every  bell  was  ringing,  and  from  the 
crowded  roofs  and  windows  of  the  houses  wreaths 
and  flowers  were  showered  into  streets  hung  with 
tapestry  and  banners.  It  was  evening  before  the 
slotv  procession  reached  St.  Peter's,  brilliant  with 
eighteen  thousand  lamps,  and  the  exhausted  Pope 
could  at  last  kneel  by  the  tomb  of  the  apostles  to 
give  thanks  to  God  for  his  return  to  the  city  of  the 
Church.  So  after  a  willing  exile  of  seventy  years  the 
successor  of  St.  Peter  came  back  from  the  huge  new 
palace  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhone  to  the  ancient 
Vatican  on  the  banks  of  the  Tiber. 

It  was  the  end  of  the  alliance  of  the  Papacy  with 
the  house  of  France,  called  by  all  but  those  who 
caused  and  profited  by  it  the  "  Babylonian  Captivity 
of  the  Church."  Five  successive  Popes,  each  bishop 
of  the  bishops  because  he  was  Bishop  of  Rome,  had 
never  entered  their  cathedral  of  the  Lateran,  a'nd 


Introductory  Retrospect. 


Christendom  rejoiced  when  Gregory  had  returned  to 
his  first  duty. 

But  while  the  Popes  had  been  neglecting  their  own 
city  to  become  the  allies  and  then  the  vassals  of  the 
kings  of  France,  three  generations  had  made  a  new 
world,  and  the  opportunities  and  conditions  of  power 
were  changed.  Old  institutions  were  decayed,  and 
new  social,  political,  and  religious  forces  were  finding 
expression. 

The  first  of  these  great  forces  limiting  the  power 
of  the  Papacy  was  the  newly  developed  sense  of  na~ 
tionality.  In  order  to  appreciate  the  bearing  of  this 
new  force  on  problems  of  the  government  of  the 
Church  we  must  recall  by  suggestion  the  past  rela- 
tions of  the  Papacy  to  the  political  organization  of 
Europe.  When  Christianity  was  made  the  religion  of 
the  Roman  Empire  under  Constantine  it  became  part 
of  an  ideal  in  which  all  nations  were  to  form  a  single 
social  organism  holding  one  faith  and  obeying  one 
government.  And  even  when  the  barbarian  inva- 
sion had  broken  the  wall  of  Trajan  and  overrun  Gaul, 
Spain,  Italy,  and  Africa,  men  still  mistook  memories 
for  hopes  and  looked  to  see  order  brought  out  of 
chaos  by  the  reestablishment  of  the  law  of  the  empire. 
The  very  conquerors  gazed  with  awe  upon  the  mighty 
social  organization  they  had  overthrown.  Able  to 
destroy,  but  not  to  create,  they  respected  the  Roman 
law  and  the  Roman  Church,  and  permitted  their  sub- 
jects to  be  judged  by  the  one  and  consoled  by  the 
other.  And  as  successive  waves  of  invasion  poured 
in  till  it  seemed  as  if  the  richest  and  most  civilized 
lands  of  the  ancient  world  were  to  become  the  desolate 


The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 


possessions  of  predatory  tribes,  the  thoughts  of  men 
turned  with  increasing  desire  toward  the  unity  and 
peace  which  had  been  the  ideal  of  the  empire.  So 
when  the  Franks  had  beaten  back  the  Saracens  from 
the  plain  of  Tours,  saving  Europe,  like  the  Greeks 
before  them,  from  slavery  to  Asia,  they  aspired  to 
the  yet  greater  task  of  reestablishing  the  Empire  of 
the  West  to  give  peace  and  justice  from  the  Medi- 
terranean to  the  Baltic  and  from  the  ocean  to  the 
Danube.  Charles  the  Great,  perhaps  the  one  most 
necessary  and  indispensable  man  in  the  history  of 
the  Western  races,  gathered  together  all  the  forms 
of  law  and  religion  in  which  there  seemed  a  pos- 
sibility of  life,  and  on  Christmas  day  of  the  year 
800  was  crowned  by  Pope  Leo  III.  Emperor  of  the 
West.  The  ideal  which  this  ceremony  expressed  is 
clearly  shown  in  a  mosaic  designed  by  order  of  the 
Pope.  Christ  appears  in  it  twice :  above,  as  Saviour, 
surrounded  by  the  apostles,  whom  he  is  sending  forth 
to  preach ;  below,  seated  as  ruler  of  the  world.  On 
his  right  kneels  Pope  Sylvester,  on  his  left  the  Em- 
peror Constantine  ;  to  the  one  he  is  handing  the  keys 
of  heaven  and  hell,  to  the  other  the  banner  of  the 
Cross.  In  the  opposite  arch  the  Apostle  Peter  sits, 
with  Leo  and  Charles  kneeling  on  either  hand  to  re- 
ceive the  pallium  of  an  archbishop  and  the  banner  of 
the  Church  militant.  The  circumscription  is,  "  Glory 
to  God  in  the  highest,  and  on  earth  peace  to  all  men 
of  good  will."  The  makers  of  that  mosaic  hoped 
they  had  founded  a  divine  institution  with  two  heads, 
one  supreme  in  spiritual,  the  other  in  temporal  things, 
and  both  holding  their  power  of  God. 


The  Church  and  the  Empire. 


But  the  double  eagle  of  Russia  is  not  more  impos- 
sible in  the  animal  kingdom  than  the  realization  of 
this  ideal  in  the  realm  of  practical  politics.  The 
mediaeval  Church  was  so  much  of  an  empire,  and  the 
mediaeval  empire  so  much  of  a  church,  that  neither 
seems  to  have  been  able  to  maintain  its  power  for 
any  long  period  without  the  aid  of  the  other.  But  in 
spite  of  this  common  need  it  is  difficult  to  find  any 
pair  of  a  great  Pope  and  a  great  emperor  who  could 
dwell  together  in  peace. 

When  the  empire  was  weak  the  undefended  Papacy 
became  the  prey  of  the  fierce  factions  of  the  Roman 
nobility,  and  Popes  who  disgraced  the  throne  of  St. 
Peter  sank  to  every  conceivable  depth  of  infamy. 
When  a  strong  emperor  defended  by  Teutonic  sol- 
diers the  purity  of  elections  and  placed  upon  the 
throne  a  man  worthy  the  office,  he  or  his  successor 
began  a  desperate  struggle  to  secure  those  rights 
of  appointing  or  investing  bishops  and  abbots  which 
the  Emperor  claimed  for  himself.  In  this  struggle 
the  Papacy  had  two  favorite  weapons:  first,  to  stir 
up  rebellion  in  the  empire  by  means  of  the  interdict 
and  excommunication;  and  second,  to  create  out- 
side of  the  bounds  of  the  empire  a  system  of  states 
whose  rulers  were  willing  to  acknowledge,  what  the 
successors  of  Charles  always  denied,  that  the  Popes 
not  only  consecrated,  but  conferred  their  authority 
and  crowns.  This  policy,  begun  under  Sylvester  II. 
(999-1003),  created,  by  direct  gift  of  the  crown 
through  the  Pope  as  the  Vicar  of  Christ  and  ruler  of 
rulers,  a  tier  of  kingdoms  between  the  borders  of  the 
Eastern  and  Western  empires:  Hungary,  1000,  Po- 


6  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

land  soon  after,  Croatia,  1076,  Servia  and  Bulgaria  in 
the  thirteenth  century.  Then  the  Popes  turned  to 
the  south  and  west  to  create  the  kingdoms  of  Naples, 
Aragon,  Portugal,  the  Island  of  Man,  the  kingdoms 
of  Scotland,  Norway,  the  double  kingdom  of  Corsica- 
Sardinia,  and  the  kingdom  of  Trinacria.  The  Eng- 
lish King  became  a  feudal  vassal  of  the  Pope,  and 
some  of  his  successors  paid  tribute  in  a  subjection 
considered  so  complete  that  a  legate  who  took  off  his 
cap  in  the  presence  of  the  King  was  much  blamed 
at  the  Papal  court.  Clement  VI.,  going  out  into 
the  unknown,  even  created  ( 1 344)  for  Louis  of  Castile 
a  kingdom  of  the  yet  undiscovered  Fortunate  Isles. 
The  swords  of  the  vassals  of  the  Papacy  and  the 
power  to  give  the  sanctions  of  religion  to  every  re- 
bellious vassal  of  the  empire  made  the  Popes  too 
strong  for  the  emperors.  The  last  members  of  the 
imperial  house  of  Hohenstaufen  died  in  a  vain  attempt 
to  maintain  their  power  over  the  kingdom  of  Sicily, 
which  the  Popes  had  given  to  Charles  of  Anjou  to  be 
held  as  a  fief  of  the  Church.  For  sixty  years  there 
was  no  emperor,  and  when  Henry  VII.,  half  by  force 
and  half  by  entreaty,  received  the  crown  at  the  Lat- 
eran  from  the  hands  of  a  cardinal  in  a  ceremony 
shorn  of  many  of  its  ancient  rites,  his  rebellious 
Italian  subjects  held  St.  Peter's,  and  the  bolts  of  their 
crossbows  fell  among  the  guests  at  the  imperial 
banquet. 

The  end  and  aim  of  the  Papal  policy  was  clearly 
shown  when  Boniface  VIII.  changed  the  ancient 
mitre  for  the  modern  triple  Papal  crown  and  appeared 
before  the  pilgrims  of  the  jubilee  of  1300  one  day  in 


Papal  Servitude  to  France. 


the  Papal,  the  next  in  the  imperial  robes,  shouting 
aloud,  "  I  am  Caesar — I  am  Emperor!"  x 

But  in  destroying  the  empire  and  trusting  their 
defence  to  the  system  of  Papal  States  they  had  cre- 
ated, the  Popes  had  prepared  a  weapon  that  could  be 
turned  against  themselves.  Kings,  once  grown 
strong,  were  as  unwilling  as  emperors  to  submit  to 
Papal  control.  France,  from  whom  came  the  blow 
which  revealed  the  hollowness  of  this  Papal  politics, 
was  not,  indeed,  a  member  of  the  system  of  Papal 
States.  Her  kings  had  grown  great  without  becom- 
ing vassals  of  the  throne  of  St.  Peter.  But  as  against 
the  empire  she  had  always  been  closely  allied  to  it, 
and  the  brother  of  King  Louis  had  done  homage  to 
Clement  IV.  (1265)  for  the  kingdom  of  Sicily,  and 
become  the  protagonist  in  the  fight  against  the  em- 
pire which  extinguished  the  race  of  Hohenstaufen. 
Philip  the  Hardy,  however,  cared  little  for  past 
alliances,  and  his  final  answer  to  the  pretensions  of 
Boniface  was  to  assault  him  in  his  own  palace  at 
Anagni  (i  303)  by  a  band  of  mercenaries — a  degrada- 
tion so  bitter  to  the  proud  old  man  that  he  died  in  a  few 
weeks.  His  successor  ruled  a  little  more  than  a  year, 
and  after  a  conclave  of  nine  months,  the  lobbying  of 
Philip  elected  a  Pope  who  transferred  the  chair  of  St. 
Peter  to  the  banks  of  the  Rhone.  During  the  seventy 
years  it  remained  there  the  preponderance  of  French 

1  There  is  some  doubt  as  to  the  exactness  of  this  anecdote,  but  none 
about  the  bull  Unam  Sanctam,  which  in  1302  asserted:  "  There  are 
two  swords,  the  temporal  and  the  spiritual ;  both  are  in  the  power  of 
the  Church,  but  one  is  held  by  the  Church  herself,  the  other  by  kings 
only  with  the  assent  and  by  sufferance  of  the  Sovereign  Pontiff.  Every 
human  being  is  subject  to  the  Roman  Pontiff,  and  to  believe  this  is 
necessary  for  salvation." 


8  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

influence  became  steadily  more  evident.  The  pro- 
portion of  Frenchmen  in  the  College  of  Cardinals  in- 
creased. Now  it  was  thirteen  out  of  eighteen,  now 
it  rose  to  twenty-five  out  of  twenty-eight,  and  again 
to  nineteen  out  of  twenty-one.  In  one  short  space 
of  a  few  years  the  Papacy  and  the  Pope's  brother  lent 
3,500,000  florins  (probably  equal  in  purchasing  power 
to  $40,000,000)  to  the  French  court. 

From  a  Vicar  of  Christ  who  had  abandoned  the 
ancient  capital  of  the  world  to  become  the  tool  of  a 
French  king  men  turned  instinctively  to  the  eternal 
King  he  represented,  and  the  victorious  English  sol- 
diers at  Poictiers  showed  the  error  of  the  Papacy  and 
the  drift  of  events  when  they  sang: 

"  If  the  Pope  is  French, 
Christ  is  English." 

In  England  this  Papal  subservience  to  the  interests 
of  France  strengthened  the  ancient  opposition  to  the 
interference  of  the  Pope  in  English  affairs.  And  in 
particular  Englishmen  resented  the  sale  of  ecclesias- 
tical offices  to  foreign  incumbents,  who  without  ever 
visiting  their  charges  drew  the  rents  and  incomes  by 
proxies  and  spent  them  in  the  luxurious  Papal  court 
at  Avignon.  England  had  thrilled  at  the  letter  of 
good  old  Robert  of  Lincoln  protesting  against  the 
order  of  the  Pope  bestowing  a  canonry  in  his  cathedral 
upon  an  Italian,  Frederick  of  Lavagna  (1253).  He 
declined  to  obey  it  as  unapostolic,  declaring  it  to  be, 
"  not  a  cure,  but  a  murder  of  souls,"  "  when  those 
who  are  appointed  to  a  pastoral  charge  only  use  the 
milk  and  the  wool  of  the  sheep  to  satisfy  their  own 


English  and  German  Patriotism.          9 

bodily  necessities."  And  one  hundred  years  later 
the  Parliament  (1351-53)  forbade  by  statute  the  in- 
troduction into  England  of  provisors  or  Papal  bulls 
which  interfered  with  the  filling  of  English  ecclesias- 
tical offices  by  Englishmen,  and  forbade  appeals  to 
Rome  by  which  causes  involving  the  persons  or  prop- 
erty of  ecclesiastics  could  be  freed  from  the  law  of 
England.  It  was  that  revolt  of  patriotism  against 
ecclesiastical  encroachment,  often  felt  by  those  en- 
tirely faithful  to  the  spiritual  teaching  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  which  found  its  classic  expression,  eight 
generations  later,  in  the  words  which  Shakespeare 
put  into  the  mouth  of  King  John : 

"  No  Italian  priest 
Shall  tithe  or  toll  in  our  dominions  ; 
But  as  we  under  Heaven  are  supreme  head, 
So  under  him,  that  great  supremacy, 
Where  we  do  reign  we  will  alone  uphold, 
Without  the  assistance  of  a  mortal  hand. 
So  tell  the  Pope ;  all  reverence  set  apart, 
To  him  and  his  usurped  authority." 

Even  in  Germany,  a  prey  to  the  greed  of  rapacious 
princelings  whose  people  were  to  wait  five  hundred 
years  for  national  unity,  the  assumptions  of  a  Pope 
who  seemed  to  use  temporal  control  as  a  tool  of  the 
French  King  called  out  the  spirit  of  patriotism  with- 
out the  form  thereof.  Pope  John  XXII.  (1316-34) 
longed  to  free  Italy  from  foreign  influence  and  unite 
the  entire  peninsula  under  the  political  headship  of 
the  Papacy.  He  endeavored  to  accomplish  this  by 
diplomacy,  and  as  a  move  in  his  deep  and  dangerous 
game  of  politics  it  became  needful  to  depose  Lewis 
of  Bavaria  from  the  kingship  of  Germany.  Taking 


lo  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

advantage  of  the  party  strifes  of  the  German  princes, 
the  Pope  drove  him  by  ban  and  interdict  to  the 
utmost  straits.  But  when  Lewis,  in  despair,  was 
on  the  point  of  surrendering  his  claim  to  the  crown, 
the  publication  of  a  single  fact  put  all  Germany 
for  the  moment  behind  him.  His  rival  had  secretly 
agreed  to  pledge  the  ancient  kingdom  of  Arelat 
to  France  as  security  for  costs  incurred  by  the 
King  in  acting  as  mediator  between  the  empire 
and  the  Pope.  A  storm  of  wrath  denounced  the 
bargain.  Then  the  Pope  issued  a  bull  separating  the 
Italian  lands  of  the  empire  from  all  connection  with 
the  kingdom  of  Germany.  All  Germany  rose  at  the 
insult,  and  for  the  first  time  in  generations  almost 
every  German  city  and  prince  and  bishop  joined  in 
common  action.  By  the  vote  of  six  of  the  great 
princes,  confirmed  by  a  Reichstag  at  Frankfort,  dis- 
ordered and  disunited  Germany  declared  that  "  the 
imperial  dignity  and  power  proceeded  from  of  old 
directly  through  the  Son  of  God.  .  .  .  Because, 
nevertheless,  some,  led  by  ambition  and  without 
understanding  of  Scripture,  .  .  .  falsely  assert  that  the 
imperial  dignity  comes  from  the  Pope,  .  .  .  and  by 
such  pestiferous  dogmas  the  ancient  enemy  moves 
discord  .  .  .  and  brings  about  seditions,  therefore 
we  declare  that  by  the  old  right  and  custom  of  the 
empire,  after  any  one  is  chosen  emperor  ...  he  is 
in  consequence  of  the  election  alone  to  be  called  true 
king  and  emperor  of  the  Romans,  and  ought  to  be 
obeyed  by  all  subjects  of  the  empire." 


INTRODUCTORY   RETROSPECT. 


CHAPTER  II. 

NEW  THEORIES    ^OF  THE    SEAT    OF    SOVEREIGNTY 
AND  THE  RISING   TIDE  OF  DEMOCRACY. 

HIS  political  change,  by  which  during  the 
thirteenth  century  the  peoples  became 
conscious  of  their  national  aspirations, 
found  expression  in  theories  concerning 
the  seat  of  authority  and  the  nature  of 
power.  Literature,  which  in  the  hands  of  the  school- 
men had  become  the  advocate  of  Papal  claims,  be- 
gan to  express  the  strongest  and  most  searching 
criticism  of  them.  About  the  court  of  the  Emperor 
gathered  a  little  knot  of  men  of  different  nations, 
whose  brilliant  polemic  writings  attracted  attention 
by  the  boldness  and  skill  with  which  they  attacked 
the  whole  logical  edifice  of  the  scholastic  theory  of 
Papal  Supremacy.  The  English  Franciscan,  William 
of  Occam,  the  most  distinguished  philosopher  of  his 
day;  the  Fleming,  Jean  of  Jandun,  celebrated  dia- 
lectician of  the  Paris  schools;  the  Italian,  Michael 
of  Cesena,  General  of  the  Franciscans ;  Brother  Bona- 
gratia,  the  distinguished  theologian  and  jurist ;  the 
German,  Henry  of  Thalheim,  and  others,  formed  the 
strongest  literary  coterie  of  the  age,  with  Marsilius 

XI 


1 2  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  Padua,  a  well-known  lawyer  and  physician,  as 
their  brightest  star.  His  book,  "  The  Defender  of 
Peace  against  the  Usurped  Jurisdiction  of  the  Roman 
Pontiff,"  was  a  daring  arraignment  and  reversal  of 
traditional  judgments  about  the  source  of  authority 
in  Church  and  State.  For  instance,  he  asserts  that 
"  church  "  in  its  apostolic  use  means  the  entire  body 
of  Christian  men,  and  that  all  Christians,  be  they 
clergy  or  laymen,  are  churchmen.  Temporal  pains 
and  penalties  do  not  belong  to  the  law  of  the  Gospel, 
which  is  not  a  law  at  all,  but  a  doctrine.  "Bishop" 
and  "  priest "  are  used  interchangeably  in  the  New 
Testament.  The  popedom,  a  useful  symbol  of  the 
unity  of  the  Church,  is  an  institution  begun  later 
than  the  apostolic  age,  whose  historical  growth  is 
clearly  traceable.  The  bishops  of  Rome  gained  pre- 
eminence, not  as  St.  Peter's  successors,  but  from 
the  connection  of  their  see  with  the  ancient  capital  of 
the  Roman  Empire.  The  sovereignty  of  the  State 
rests  with  the  people.  By  them  the  laws  are  properly 
made,  and  their  validity  comes  from  the  people's 
sovereignty.  The  community  of  the  citizens,  or  their 
majority,  expressing  its  will  by  representatives,  is 
supreme.  Government  requires  a  unity  of  office,  not 
necessarily  of  number.  But  if,  as  is  usually  wisest, 
a  king  be  chosen,  he  must  be  supported  by  enough 
force  to  overpower  the  riotous  few,  but  not  the  mass 
of  the  nation.  In  the  ecclesiastical  organization,  also, 
the  authority  rests  not  with  the  hierarchy,  but  is 
derived  from  the  whole  Church,  and  the  priestly  class 
are  only  their  executives,  responsible  to  a  General 
Council  formed  of  clergy  and  laity  alike.  The  clergy 


The  Tide  of  Democracy.  13 

are  the  executives  of  the  Church  only  in  spiritual 
affairs.  Their  property  and  incomes  are  as  much 
subject  to  the  civil  law  as  those  of  their  lay  brethren. 
His  office  does  not  change  the  responsibility  of  a 
clergyman  to  the  civil  law,  for  if  he  should  steal  or 
murder,  who  would  say  that  these  were  to  be  re- 
garded as  spiritual  acts?  These  opinions  were 
formally  condemned  by  the  ecclesiastical  authorities, 
and  Marsilius  was  denounced  as  a  radical  innovator 
who  would  destroy  Church  and  State. 

Such  bold  denials  of  the  theories  which  had  been 
formed  to  support  the  social  and  ecclesiastical  insti- 
tutions of  the  middle  ages  had  but  little  direct  effect 
outside  of  the  circle  of  clerks  and  theologians  to 
whom  they  were  addressed,  but  they  were  dimly 
felt  and  half- unconsciously  formulated  during  the 
fourteenth  century  in  political  changes  by  which 
the  feudal  power  and  privileges  of  civil  and  ecclesi- 
astical lords  were  in  some  places  checked,  in  others 
destroyed,  by  the  efforts  of  a  middle  class  of 
burgher  merchants  or  manufacturers  and  small  landed 
freeholders.  And  behind  and  beneath  these  politi- 
cal changes  there  could  be  heard  the  half-articulate 
murmur  of  the  rising  tide  of  democracy,  with  its 
claim  that  men  are  equal  before  God  and  the  laws, 
and  its  hope  of  a  society  so  organized  and  governed 
that  none  should  ever  want  but  the  idle  and  vicious. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  mediaeval  man  was 
chiefly  occupied  with  the  acquisition  or  defence 
of  privileges.  Feudal  society  was  divided  into 
very  strictly  separated  classes,  and  the  unwritten 
principle  at  its  foundation  was  that  all  rights  not  ex- 


14  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

pressly  granted  to  a  lower  class  were  reserved  for  the 
higher.  Time  had  been  when  the  enjoyment  of  these 
privileges  meant  the  performance  of  certain  necessary 
duties.  The  castle  of  the  lord,  around  which  the 
wattled  mud  huts  of  the  peasants  clung  like  swallows' 
nests,  may  have  been  the  abode  of  tyranny,  but  it 
was  also  a  refuge  from  robbery.  To  be  unbound  to 
any  community,  large  or  small,  which  thus  possessed 
a  leader  and  the  means  of  self-protection,  was  to  be 
exposed  to  unlimited  outrage  in  a  time  when  every 
man  did  that  which  was  right  in  his  own  eyes  to  all 
who  did  not  belong  to  his  own  community.  And  it 
came  to  pass  that  to  be  a  landless  man  was  to  be 
thought  an  outlaw,  and  to  be  a  lordless  man  a  thief. 
But  as  society  became  more  orderly  and  private  war 
less  incessant,  these  privileges  became  oppressive  to  a 
people  no  longer  bound  to  their  superiors  by  perils 
shared,  or  grateful  for  defence  against  danger.  And 
peasant  and  burgher,  chafing  under  the  bondage  of 
those  to  whom  they  were  compelled  to  render  ser- 
vices without  service  in  return,  began  everywhere  to 
long  passionately  for  legal  equality  or  freedom. 
A  single  circumstance  gave  force  to  this  long- 
cherished  desire.  Misery  alone  is  sterile,  and  the 
dead  weight  of  injustice  will  either  crush  a  people 
to  a  servile  temper  or  provoke  a  'despair  that 
perishes  by  its  own  ferocity.  The  conscious- 
ness of  power  is  needed  to  animate  a  useful  revo- 
lution. And  during  the  fourteenth  century  this 
consciousness  was  diffused  among  the  common  people 
in  some  parts  of  western  Europe  by  the  demonstration 
of  the  irresistible  force  on  the  battle-field  of  a  properly 


The  Flemish  Burghers.  15 

drilled  and  handled  infantry.  So  long  as  the  knight, 
with  a  couple  of  esquires  and  a  score  of  professional 
men-at-arms  cased  in  steel,  mounted  on  heavy  horses, 
and  trained  to  ride  and  fence,  was  more  than  a  match 
for  the  men  of  a  dozen  villages  who  had  never  learned 
how  to  march  or  to  hold  the  simplest  formation,  re- 
volt among  the  lower  classes  meant  only  the  treach- 
erous and  useless  murder  of  some  isolated  oppressors. 

It  was  just  at  the  turn  of  the  thirteenth  century 
(1302)  when  the  shock  of  Courtrai  sounded  through 
the  world.  Twenty  thousand  Flemish  artisans  were 
brought  to  bay  in  a  great  plain  by  the  much  larger 
army  of  France.  The  few  dispossessed  nobles  who 
were  their  military  leaders  killed  their  horses  and 
knighted  thirty  merchants  as  a  sign  of  fellowship, 
and  shouting  their  war-cry  of  "Shield  and  friend!" 
the  solid  mass  of  men  stood  stoutly  with  boar-spears 
and  iron-shod  clubs  against  the  French  charge.  In 
two  hours  fifteen  thousand  fallen  men-at-arms  choked 
the  ditch  which  guarded  their  front,  or  were  scattered 
over  the  plain.  They  covered  the  walls  of  the  ca- 
thedral of  Courtrai  with  the  gilded  spurs  of  the 
knights,  and  the  roll  of  the  dead  sounds  like  a  mus- 
ter of  the  nobility  of  France — "  fallen,"  as  the  chroni- 
cler laments,  "by  the  hands  of  villeins."  This  con- 
sciousness of  power  gave  hope,  and  from  hope  came 
effort.  Therefore  the  fourteenth  century  is  marked  in 
many  parts  of  the  world  by  desperate  struggles  for 
liberty  on  the  part  of  the  peasant  and  artisan  classes 
rising  out  of  a  half-servile  condition. 

The  relation  of  this  struggle  to  religion,  and  to 
the  social  and  moral  conditions  with  which  religion 


1 6  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

is  concerned,  may  best  be  illustrated  by  the  English 
peasant  revolt  of  1 38 1 ,  which,  long  misjudged  through 
the  reports  of  its  enemies,  apparently  a  failure,  is  now 
recognized  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  and  success- 
ful of  revolutions.  In  the  middle  of  the  century  the 
power  of  the  English  peasant  was  suddenly  increased 
by  a  singular  cause.  The  black  death,  starting  in 
those  crowded  cities  of  Asia  which  have  always  been 
the  homes  of  pestilence,  spread  slowly  but  steadily 
over  Europe.  It  is  difficult  to  appreciate  the  horror 
of  its  visit  in  an  age  when  the  simplest  rules  of  sanitary 
science  were  unknown  and  medical  practice  little  more 
than  superstition.  Cautious  judges  concede  that 
twenty-five  millions  of  people  perished.  In  England 
alone  a  conservative  estimate  allows  that  eight  hun- 
dred thousand  people,  one  third  of  the  total  popula- 
tion, died  by  a  "  foul  death,"  which  smote  the  children 
of  the  king  and  the  children  of  the  slave,  so  that  there 
was  not  a  house  where  there  was  not  one  dead.  As 
a  consequence  labor  became  so  scarce  that  the  price 
of  it  rose  at  once.  The  noble  whose  crop  cost  to 
harvest  £3  i^s.  gd.  the  year  before  the  plague  had 
to  pay  £12  igs.  iod.  the  year  after.  This  situation 
hastened  the  process  of  freeing  the  nativi,  or  serfs, 
which  had  begun  years  before.  For  those  personal 
services,  such  as  ploughing  one  day  every  week  in  the 
year,  gathering  the  lord's  nuts,  making  the  lord's 
park  walls  over  against  his  land,  carrying  the  lord's 
corn  home  every  fortnight  on  the  Saturday,  which 
reminded  the  tenants  of  their  descent  from  bondsmen 
and  thralls,  were  then  quite  largely  commuted  by 
the  impoverished  lords  for  money  payments. 

But  the  landowners  who  farmed  by  bailiffs  were 


The  English  Peasants.  1 7 

not  disposed  to  see  their  profits  impaired  and  their 
rents  lowered  without  a  struggle.  And  as  soon  as 
the  cessation  of  the  plague  enabled  Parliament  to 
meet,  they  passed  the  Statute  of  Laborers,  which 
stood  on  the  books  for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years. 
It  provided  that  every  able-bodied  man  or  woman 
under  sixty  must  work  for  any  employer  who  sought 
him  for  suitable  service  at  the  wages  of  the  year 
1347,  prohibited  him  from  leaving  his  employer  be- 
fore the  end  of  his  term  of  service,  forbade  his  em- 
ployer to  pay  him  higher  wages,  and  provided 
penalties  of  fine  or  imprisonment  for  disobedience. 
It  even  forbade  the  employer  to  fulfil  contracts  for 
higher  wages  made  before  the  passing  of  the  act. 

This  law  was  met  by  the  establishment  of  a  vast 
secret  combination  of  artisans  and  peasants, — the 
first  trade-union, — which  was  so  successful  that 
twenty  years  after  the  plague  the  price  of  harvest 
labor  was  double  that  enforced  by  the  statute.  Then 
the  lords,  in  despair,  attempted  to  reverse  the  com- 
mutations to  their  ancient  equivalents  in  forced  labor. 
The  result  was  to  them  a  tremendous  astonishment. 
The  villeins  of  all  England  rose  in  revolt.  For  this 
they  had  been  partly  prepared  by  preaching,  which 
gave  the  sanction  of  religion  to  their  demand  for 
justice.  Men  like  John  Ball,  a  priest  of  Kent,  out 
of  whose  sermons  were  made  such  popular  rhymes  as : 

"  When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman?  " 

had  for  years  been  denouncing  the  wickedness  of 
the  rich  and  the  injustice  of  social  and  political  con- 
ditions. They  were  now  reinforced  by  priests  armed 


1 8  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

with  the  new  knowledge  of  the  Bible  which  was 
spreading  rapidly  from  the  teaching  of  the  friends 
and  pupils  of  Wiclif.  And  many  a  hamlet  heard 
the  stern  appeals  of  the  prophets  from  tyranny  to 
God  applied  to  their  own  times.  So  it  was  that 
when  the  southern  force  of  the  insurgents,  entering 
London  by  the  help  of  their  sympathizers  among  the 
citizens,  fired  the  palace  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster, 
they  flung  a  plunderer  caught  with  a  silver  cup  back 
into  the  flames  saying  "  they  were  seekers  of  truth 
and  justice,  not  thieves."  It  was  this  moral  and 
religious  basis  of  the  rising  which  made  the  northern 
army  of  insurgents,  when  London  lay  at  their  mercy, 
receive  the  simple  promise  of  their  boy  King  to  "  free 
them  and  their  lands  forever,  that  they  should  be  no 
more  called  serfs,"  with  shouts  of  joy,  and  to  quietly 
disperse  to  their  homes  with  charters  which,  before 
the  ink  was  dry,  their  King  was  secretly  promising 
his  councillors  to  wash  out  in  blood.  But  though 
the  insurrection  was  conquered  by  treachery,  and  its 
leaders  died  by  hundreds  on  the  gallows,  it  did  not 
fail.  Parliament  revoked  the  concessions  of  the  King 
and  professed  a  willingness  to  perish  all  together  in' 
one  day  rather  than  grant  "  liberties  and  manumis- 
sions to  their  villeins  and  bond-tenants,"  but  the 
peril  had  been  too  great  for  a  second  risk.  From 
that  day  to  this  many  English-speaking  men  have 
ground  the  face  of  the  poor;  but  since  1381,  when 
the  peasants  were  taught  by  the  Poor  Priests l  to  use 

1  It  is  not  established  that  Wiclif  gave  any  personal  encouragement 
to  the  rising,  but  rather  the  contrary.  There  is,  however,  an  unmis- 
takable spiritual  resemblance  between  it  and  his  teaching. 


The  Tide  of  Democracy.  19 

their  power  in  the  demand  for  the  rights  of  humanity 
in  the  name  of  God  and  justice,  no  one  has  attempted 
to  make  serfs  of  the  English  laborers.  And  this 
spirit  of  democracy,  the  desire  for  freedom  or  equal 
rights  before  God  and  the  laws,  appealing  against 
every  caste  and  privilege  in  Church  or  State  to  con- 
science and  the  Bible,  had  during  the  seventy  years 
of  the  Papal  absence  from  Rome  become  a  force 
which  had  everywhere  to  be  reckoned  with. 


•\ 


INTRODUCTORY   RETROSPECT. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  NEW  LEARNING. 
PETRARCH,  THE  PROTOTYPE  OF  THE  HUMANISTS. 

|HE  general  movement  of  the  human  spirit 
during  the  fourteenth  century,  producing 
patriotism,  new  theories  of  the  seat  of 
authority,  and  the  desire  for  freedom, 
found  a  special  expression  for  itself  in 
Italy  in  the  beginnings  of  the  New  Learning  or  the 
movement  of  the  Humanists.  This  used,  by  a  nar- 
rowness of  thought  and  diction,  to  be  called  the 
Renascence,  but  is  now  rightly  regarded  as  only  the 
intellectual  centre  of  that  broad  movement  which 
affected  every  side  of  life. 

To  define  so  complex  a  movement  as  the  New 
Learning  is  impossible.  It  can  best  be  made  clear  in 
a  sketch  of  the  work  and  character  of  Petrarch,  the 
prophet  and  prototype  of  Humanism,  who  died  at 
Arqua,  near  Padua,  three  years  before  the  return  of 
the  Papacy  from  Avignon. 

His  father  was  a  Florentine  notary,  banished  by 
the  same  decree  with  Dante,  who  finally  settled  at 
Avignon  to  practise  his  profession  in  the  neighbor- 

30 


Petrarch  and  Virgil. 


hood  of  the  Papal  court.  In  the  jurists'  library 
were  some  manuscripts  of  Cicero,  and  as  soon  as 
Petrarch  could  read  he  loved  them.  Doubtless  his 
father,  who  destined  the  lad  for  the  law,  smiled 
approval  at  such  appropriate  tastes.  But  he  soon 
found  out  his  mistake.  This  youngster  with  a  voice 
of  extraordinary  power  and  sweetness,  who  loved  to 
play  his  lute  and  listen  to  the  song  of  the  birds,  was 
not  seeking  in  the  works  of  the  great  Roman  lawyer 
legal  information.  It  was  the  majestic  swing,  the 
noble  music,  of  the  Ciceronian  Latin  which  charmed 
him,  and  as  the  years  went  on  he  suffered  the  pangs 
which  have  been  common  in  all  ages  to  the  lovers  of 
the  Muses  held  by  parental  worldly  wisdom  to  the 
study  of  the  law.  Bad  reports  came  back  from  the 
tutors  of  Montpellier  and  Bologna.  Reproaches  and 
excuses  ended  in  a  parental  raid,  which  discovered 
under  the  bed  a  hidden  treasure  of  tempting  manu- 
scripts. They  were  promptly  condemned  to  the 
flames,  and  only  the  tears  of  the  lad  saved  a  Virgil 
and  one  speech  of  Cicero,  to  be,  as  the  father  said, 
smiling  in  spite  of  himself  at  the  desperate  dismay  of 
the  convicted  sinner,  one  for  an  occasional  leisure 
hour,  the  other  a  help  in  legal  studies.  And  Virgil 
and  Cicero  became  to  Petrarch  lifelong  companions. 
The  copy  of  the  yEneid  thus  saved  from  the  flames 
had  been  made  by  his  own  hand,  and  he  wrote 
in  it  the  date  of  the  death  of  his  son,  his  friends, 
and  the  woman  he  loved.  It  was  stolen  from  him 
once,  and  returned  after  ten  years,  and  he  wrote 
in  it  the  day  of  its  loss  and  the  day  of  its  return. 
To  Petrarch  Virgil  was  "  lord  of  language,"  a  char- 


22  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

acter  noble  as  his  genius,  half  poet  and  half  saint,  a 
divine  master.  But  to  say  this  was  only  to  repeat 
Dante,  and  Petrarch  did  little  for  the  influence  of 
the  Mantuan — could  not,  indeed,  escape  from  that 
habit  of  allegorical  interpretation  which  thought  of 
a  poet  as  a  riddle-maker  whose  object  was  not  to 
make  truth  clear  and  beautiful,  but  obscure. 

But  Petrarch  may  with  truth  be  called  the  modern 
discoverer  of  Cicero.  Not,  indeed,  that  Cicero's  name 
was  before  unknown,  but  that  Cicero's  works  were 
little  read  and  still  less  understood.  Many  of  his 
finest  pieces  had  not  been  seen  for  generations.  And 
from  his  youth  up  Petrarch  followed  like  a  sleuth- 
hound  every  possible  trace  of  a  lost  manuscript. 
When,  riding  along  the  roads,  he  caught  sight  of  an 
old  cloister,  his  first  thought  was,  "  Is  there  a  Cicero 
manuscript  in  the  library?"  In  the  midst  of  a 
journey  he  suddenly  determined  to  stop  at  Liege, 
because  he  heard  there  were  many  old  books  in  the 
city,  and  his  reward  was  two  unknown  speeches  of 
Cicero.  He  not  only  hunted  himself,  but  as  his 
circle  of  friends  and  his  means  increased,  he  spread 
his  efforts  to  Germany,  Greece,  France,  Spain,  and 
Britain — wherever  any  chance  of  a  find  was  suggested. 
Of  course  he  had  his  disappointments.  Once  he 
imagined  he  had  secured  the  lost  "  Praise  of  Philos- 
ophy "  ;  but  though  the  style  was  Cicero's,  he  could 
read  nothing  in  it  to  account  for  Augustine's  enthu- 
siasm, which  had  first  put  him  on  the  track.  At  last 
the  doubt  was  ended,  for  he  found  a  quotation  in 
another  writing  of  Augustine's  which  was  not  in  his 
manuscript.  He  was  the  victim  of  a  false  title.  And 


Petrarch  and  Cicero.  23 

when  he  discovered  that  what  he  had  was  an  extract 
of  the  "  Academica,"  he  always  afterward  rated  it 
as  one  of  the  least  valuable  of  Cicero's  works.  Then 
he  thought  that  he  had  found  the  treatise  on 
"  Fame."  He  loaned  the  volume  which  contained  it, 
and  neither  he  nor  the  world  has  ever  seen  it  since 
— surely  the  costliest  book  loan  on  record.1 

But  no  disappointment  damped  his  enthusiasm. 
When  the  manuscript  of  Homer  was  sent  to  him  as 
a  present  from  Constantinople,  though  he  could  read 
no  word  of  Greek,  nor  find  any  one  who  could,  he 
knew  that  this  was  the  book  beloved  of  Horace  and 
Cicero.  He  took  it  in  his  arms  and  kissed  it.  How 
great  must  have  been  his  joy  when,  in  the  cathedral 
library  of  Verona,  he  unexpectedly  stumbled  on  an 
old  half-decayed  manuscript  of  some  of  Cicero's  let- 
ters !  He  was  sick  and  tired,  but  he  would  trust  his 
frail  treasure  to  no  copyist.  He  announced  his  find 
to  Italy  in  an  epistle  to  Cicero  himself,  and  hence- 
forth he  enriched  literature  by  a  stream  of  citations 
whose  source,  warned  by  experience,  he  never  trusted 
out  of  his  own  hands.  Why  he  never  allowed  it  to 
be  copied  during  his  lifetime  can  best  be  explained 
by  those  collectors  who  dislike  to  have  replicas  made  of 
their  pictures.  Nor  was  he  content  with  the  writings  of 
antiquity.  The  portraits  of  Roman  emperors  on  coins 
excited  his  imagination.  Others  had  collected  coins 
and  medals  as  rarities,  but  he  was  the  first  modern 
to  understand  their  value  as  historical  monuments. 


1  Voigt  says  there  is  no  proof  that  it  really  was  the  treatise  on 
"  Fame."  But  his  doubt  seems  based  only  on  the  general  principle 
that  a  lost  fish  increases  in  size — which  is  not  always  true. 


24  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

From  the  great  men  of  the  past  he  learned  to  ex- 
ercise a  common-sense  criticism  on  the  methods  and 
results  of  the  traditional  learning  of  his  time.  In 
scorn  and  enthusiasm  he  flung  himself  with  all  his 
powers  on  the  scholastic  system  of  instruction,  and 
denounced  the  universities  as  nests  of  ignorance, 
adorning  fools  with  pompous  degrees  of  master  and 
doctor.  In  particular  he  objected  to  the  division  of 
disciplines.  If  he  were  asked  what  art  he  professed 
he  would  answer  that  there  was  but  one  art,  of  which 
he  was  a  humble  disciple :  the  art  of  truth  and  virtue, 
which  made  the  wisdom  of  life.  But  he  was  not 
content  with  vague  denunciation.  The  professors  of 
every  discipline — history,  arithmetic,  music,  astron- 
omy, philosophy,  theology,  and  eloquence — heard 
his  voice  accusing  them  of  an  empty  sophistry  with- 
out real  relation  to  life. 

The  objects  of  his  first  and  bitterest  attacks  were 
astrology  and  alchemy,  whose  pretensions  then  flat- 
tered the  ear  of  princes  and  dazzled  the  hopes  of 
peasants.  He  denounced  astrology,  stamped  with 
the  authority  of  a  teacher's  chair  at  Bologna  and 
Padua,  as  a  baseless  superstition,  and,  in  the  very 
spirit  of  Cicero  toward  the  augurs,  related  with  glee 
how  a  court  astrologer  of  Mila^i  had  told  him  that, 
though  he  made  a  living  out  of  it,  the  whole  science 
was  a  fraud.  He  accused  the  physicians  also  of  being 
charlatans.  When  Pope  Clement  VI.  was  ill,  Petrarch 
wrote  a  letter  warning  him  against  them.  He  was 
wont  to  say  that  no  physician  should  cross  his  thresh- 
old, and  when  custom  compelled  him  to  receive  them 
in  his  old  age,  wrote  with  humor  of  his  persistence  in 


Petrarch  the  Critic  of  Scholasticism.     25 

neglecting  all  their  orders  and  his  consequent  return 
to  health.  But  he  made  far  more  effective  attacks 
than  any  mere  witty  expression  of  a  personal  mood. 
To  his  friend  the  distinguished  physician  Giovanni 
Dondi  he  gave  strong  reasons  for  his  scorn  of  the 
ordinary  practitioner.  He  did  not  deny  that  there 
might  be  a  science  of  medicine.  He  suggested  that 
the  Arabs  had  made  the  beginnings  of  it.  But  he 
denied  to  the  empirics  and  pretenders  who  were 
imposing  on  the  people  by  wise  looks  and  long 
words  every  title  of  real  learning.  And  he  pointed 
out  as  the  path  to  a  science  of  health  and  disease 
the  entirely  different  method  of  modern  medicine. 
The  lawyers  so  hated  in  his  youth  felt  the  lash  of 
his  invective.  He  called  them  mere  casuists,  split- 
ting hairs  in  a  noble  art  once  adorned  by  the  learn- 
ing and  eloquence  of  Cicero,  but  sunk  to  a  mere  way 
of  earning  bread  by  clever  trickery  in  the  hands  of 
men  ignorant  and  careless  of  the  origin,  history,  and 
relations  of  the  principles  of  law.  And  he  took  a  keen 
delight  in  pointing  out  the  blunders  in  history  and 
literature  made  by  the  greatest  jurist  of  his  time. 
But  it  was  in  philosophy  that  he  came  into  sharp- 
est conflict  with  the  scholastic  method,  which  hung 
like  a  millstone  around  the  neck  of  learning.  To 
make  dialectics  an  end  instead  of  a  means  he  called 
putting  the  practice  of  boys  into  the  place  of  the  fin- 
ished wisdom  of  men.  Logic  was  only  an  aid*  to 
rhetoric  and  poetry,  and  ideas  worth  far  more  than 
the  words  which  the  schoolmen  put  in  their  place. 
When  they  hid  behind  the  shield  of  Aristotle,  Petrarch 
was  not  dismayed.  In  the  pamphlet  "  Concerning 


26  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

his  Own  Ignorance  and  that  of  Many  Others "  he 
dared  to  say  that  Aristotle  was  a  man  and  there  was 
much  that  even  he  did  not  know.  And  he  finally 
asserted  that,  while  no  one  could  doubt  the  great- 
ness of  Aristotle's  mind,  there  was  in  all  his  writings 
no  trace  of  eloquence — a  word  which  took  as  much 
courage  to  cast  as  the  stone  from  the  shepherd's  sling 
that  freed  Israel. 

It  was  the  word  of  an  independent.  And  this  in- 
dependence, this  assertion  of  his  personal  individual 
judgment,  marks  the  second  service  of  Petrarch. 
He  was  not  only  a  critic  of  scholastic  methods  and  an 
instaurator  of  learning,  but  he  threw  a  high  light  on 
the  value  of  the  individual. 

We  have  seen  why  the  mediaeval  man  instinctively 
regarded  himself  as  one  of  a  class.  The  serf  or  bur- 
gher, noble  or  ecclesiastic,  was  a  member  of  a  great  cor- 
poration, and  his  chances  and  duties  were  limited  not 
only  by  circumstances  and  abilities,  but  by  obligations 
joining  him  to  his  fellows  in  every  direction.  The  ne- 
cessities of  a  half-barbarous  condition  had  made  the 
social  unit,  not  the  man  or  his  family,  but  the  com- 
munity. And  the  ideal  of  the  feudal  system  was  a 
single  great  organization,  ruled  in  ascending  stages 
by  a  civil  hierarchy  of  overlords,  with  every  detail 
of  life  guided  and  directed  by  the  spiritual  hier- 
archy of  the  clergy,  who  bound  or  loosed  the  oaths 
that  held  society  together,  directed  consciences  by 
the  confessional,  and,  by  denying  the  means  of  grace 
in  the  sacrament,  could  cast  any  man  out  from  the 
fellowship  of  God  and  man  in  this  world  and  the 
next.  Hence  mediaeval  society  lacked  the  mobility 


Petrarch  and  Individuality. 


and  freedom  needed  to  develop  individuality.  In  those 
days  travelling  was  difficult.  For  the  most  part  a  man 
expected  to  die  where  he  was  born,  and  do  his  duty  in 
that  rank  of  life  to  which  God  had  called  him,  unless, 
indeed,  his  relation  to  the  social  corporation  drew  him 
from  his  home  on -war  or  pilgrimage.  As  against 
the  overwhelming  pressure  of  this  corporate  sense 
there  was  little  to  develop  the  consciousness  of  the 
ego.  Even  if  the  man  of  the  middle  ages  went  to 
the  university,  travelled,  and  mingled  with  his  fel- 
lows, his  mind  was  still  confined.  He  found  there 
no  chance  or  impulse  to  measure  the  heights  and 
depths  of  his  own  nature,  or  to  investigate  freely  the 
world  without.  The  authority  of  tradition  defined 
the  objects  and  methods  of  study,  and  in  every  uni- 
versity of  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  the 
"  freedom  of  academic  teaching  "  was  limited  with  a 
strictness  from  which  even  the  narrowest  denomi- 
national institutions  of  learning  would  shrink  to-day. 
The  organized  discipline  of  study  had  largely  sunk 
into  a  base  mechanic  exercise,  a  mere  gymnastic  of 
the  mind.  In  this  social  and  intellectual  atmosphere 
it  was  difficult  for  man  to  know  himself. 

The  literary  instinct  of  Petrarch  has  presented  in 
dramatic  form  the  moment  when  he  first  broke 
these  bonds  and  realized  the  value  of  self.  That 
love  of  nature  which  appears  in  his  sonnets  in 
such  close  connection  with  his  power  of  self-analysis 
gave  the  occasion.  So  far  as  we  know,  Petrarch  was 
the  first  modern  man  to  climb  a  mountain  for  the 
sake  of  looking  at  the  view.  About  the  year  1336, 
when  he  was  thirty-two  years  old,  he  and  his  brother 


28  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Gerard  set  out  from  Vaucluse  to  climb  Mount 
Ventoux.  Gerard  was  evidently  very  much  bored, 
and  remained  all  day  in  that  state  of  subacute  ir- 
ritation common  to  men  who  have  been  seduced 
by  the  enthusiasm  of  a  friend  into  a  tiresome  ex- 
pedition for  which  they  have  no  taste.  But  Petrarch 
wrote :  "  I  stood  astonished  on  the  top.  Under  my 
feet  floated  the  clouds;  before  my  eyes  the  snow- 
covered  heads  of  the  Alps  towered  over  the  beloved 
plains  of  Italy.  I  knew  them,  alas!  far  from  me, 
and  yet  they  seemed  so  near  that  I  could  almost 
touch  them.  Then  I  remembered  the  past.  I  ran 
over  in  thought  my  student  years  in  Bologna,  and 
saw  how  wishes  and  tastes  had  indeed  changed,  but 
vices  and  faults  remained  unchanged  or  were  grown 
worse.  Again  I  turned  my  gaze  on  the  wonderful 
spectacle  of  nature  that  had  drawn  me  to  the  top  of 
the  mountain,  saw  round  about  me  mountains  and 
valleys,  land  and  sea,  and  rejoiced  at  the  view. 
Thus  gazing,  now  singling  out  some  single  object, 
now  letting  my  sight  range  far  into  the  distance,  now 
raising  eyes  and  soul  to  heaven,  I  unconsciously  drew 
out  of  my  pocket  Augustine's  '  Confessions,'  a  book  I 
always  carry  with  me,  and  it  opened  at  this  passage : 
'  Men  go  to  wonder  at  the  peaks  of  the  mountains, 
the  huge  waves  of  the  sea,  the  broad  rivers,  the  great 
ocean,  the  circles  of  the  stars,  and  for  these  things 
forget  themselves.'  I  trembled  at  these  words,  shut 
the  book,  and  fell  into  a  rage  with  myself  for  gaping 
at  earthly  things  when  I  ought  to  have  learned  long 
ago,  even  from  heathen  philosophers,  that  the  soul  is 
the  only  great  and  astonishing  thing.  Silent  I  left 


Petrarch  the  Poseur.  29 

the  mountain  and  turned  my  view  from  the  things 
without  me  to  that  within." 

And  this  dramatic  announcement  marks  the  be- 
ginning of  the  modern  habit  of  introspection.  Nat- 
urally he  developed  the  defects  of  his  qualities,  and 
complains  constantly  of  a  spiritual  malady  he  calls 
acedia.  Melancholy,  the  mood  of  heavy  indifference 
to  all  objects  of  thought  and  feeling, — the  malaria 
of  the  soul, — had  long  been  known.  The  early 
fathers  denounced  it,  and  the  mediaeval  theolo- 
gians, who  saw  much  of  it  in  the  cloisters,  ranked  it 
among  the  deadly  sins.  But  a  single  trait  of  Pe- 
trarch's character  developed  this  old-fashioned  mel- 
ancholy into  the  modern  Weltschmerz.  He  was  the 
victim  of  a  ceaseless  appetite  for  fame  which  no 
praise  could  satisfy — a  passion  which  tormented  most 
of  the  early  Humanists  and  spread  from  them  to  the 
whole  society  of  Italy  during  the  fifteenth  century. 
This  passion  led  him  constantly  to  do  things  he  de- 
spised and  made  such  a  gulf  between  his  knowledge 
of  what  he  was  and  his  ideal  of  what  he  ought  to  be 
that  he  despaired  at  times  of  himself  and  the  world. 

For  no  sketch  of  Petrarch  is  complete  which  fails 
to  show  him  not  only  as  an  instaurator  of  learning 
and  an  asserter  of  individuality,  but  also  as  a  hum- 
bug. Even  Napoleon,  with  the  resources  of  France 
to  help  him,  could  not  pose  with  the  ceaseless  sub- 
tlety and  variety  of  Petrarch.  Every  strong  and 
true  passion  of  his  soul  was  mingled  with  self-seeking 
and  self-consciousness.  He  was  a  lover  of  nature 
and  of  solitude ;  but  he  always  took  care  to  se- 
lect an  accessible  hermitage  and  to  let  all  the 


30  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

world  know  where  it  was.  When  he  dwelt  in  his 
house  by  the  fountain  of  Vaucluse,  with  an  old  house- 
keeper and  two  servants  to  look  after  him,  and  an  old 
dog  to  lie  at  his  feet,  he  describes  his  life  among  the 
simple  peasants  as  that  of  one  busily  content  with 
watching  the  beauties  of  nature  and  reading  the 
words  of  the  mighty  dead,  who  was  willing  to  let  the 
striving  world  wag  on  as  it  will.  But  in  reality  it 
was  that  of  a  scholar  listening  eagerly  to  every  echo 
of  his  fame  which  reached  him  from  the  outer  world, 
and  counting  the  pilgrims  drawn  to  his  solitude  by 
his  growing  reputation.  He  was  fond  of  beginning 
his  letters,  "  In  the  stillness  of  dusky  night,"  or,  "  At 
the  first  flush  of  sunrise,"  and  perfectly  conscious  of 
the  interest  aroused  by  the  suggested  figure  of  the 
pale  student  bent  over  his  books  in  mysterious  and 
noble  loneliness.  With  that  curious  weakness  which 
leads  inveterate  vanity  to  find  pleasure  in  betraying 
itself,  Petrarch  has  written  that  when  he  fled  from 
cities  and  society  to  his  quiet  houses  at  Vaucluse  or 
Arqua,  he  had  done  it  to  impress  the  imaginations  of 
men  and  to  increase  his  fame ;  which,  like  all  the  acts 
and  words  of  a  poseur,  was  probably  about  half  true 
and  half  false. 

One  who  thus  enthroned  and  adored  his  own 
genius  demanded,  of  course,  tribute  from  his  friends. 
And  in  all  the  letters  he  exchanges  with  his  inti- 
mates we  find  that  the  topic  is  never  their  concerns, 
but  always  the  concerns  of  Petrarch.  He  is  fond 
of  decorating  his  epistles  to  them  with  Ciceronian 
phrases  on  the  nobility  of  friendship.  All  the  great 
men  of  antiquity  had  friends.  But  he  who  stepped 


Petrarch  Serving  Two  Masters.         31 

aside  from  the  part  of  playing  chorus  to  Petrarch's 
role  of  hero  did  so  at  his  peril.  To  criticise  his  writ- 
ing even  in  the  smallest  was  to  risk  a  transference  to 
the  ranks  of  his  enemies. 

His  love  for  Laura  was  undoubtedly  genuine. 
There  is  a  breath  of  real  pain  in  his  answer  to  a  teas- 
ing friend :  "  Oh,  would  that  it  were  hypocrisy,  and 
not  madness!"  But  Petrarch  was  not  unaware  that 
all  the  world  loves  a  lover.  No  one  felt  more 
acutely  than  he  did  the  patient  dignity  conferred  by 
a  hopeless  passion  for  an  unattainable  woman.  As 
his  fountain  of  Vaucluse  became  more  beautiful  to 
him  because  he  had  made  it  famous,  so  he  loved 
Laura  more  because  he  had  sung  his  love  for  all  the 
world  to  hear. 

Petrarch  was  religious,  and  in  spite  of  his  admira- 
tion for  Plato  and  Cicero,  wrote  that  he  counted  the 
least  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as  greater  than  they. 
He  is  continually  denouncing  the  profligacy  of  the 
Papal  court  at  Avignon,  whose  members  deserted 
their  duties  at  home  to  live  in  luxury  on  the  income 
of  benefices  they  never  visited.  But  Petrarch  him- 
self was  priest,  canon,  and  archdeacon  without  ever 
preaching  a  sermon  or  saying  a  mass,  residing  near 
his  cathedral,  or  caring  for  the  poor.  And  no  man 
of  his  time  was  more  persistent  in  the  attempt  to 
increase  his  income  by  adding  new  benefices  to  the 
ones  whose  duties  he  already  neglected.  He  who 
runs  may  read  this  in  a  mass  of  begging  letters,  where 
pride  and  literary  skill  ill  conceal  the  eagerness  of  the 
request  and  the  wrath  and  bitterness  of  disappoint- 
ment. He  was  a  lover  of  freedom,  whose  praises  he 


32  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

sang  with  all  his  skill.  But  he  shocked  even  his  most 
faithful  friends  by  accepting  the  hospitality  and  mak- 
ing gain  of  the  favor  of  the  Viscoati,  whose  unscrupu- 
lous power  was  threatening  every  free  city  of  North 
Italy. 

His  devouring  ambition,  the  appetite  for  success 
as  symbolized  by  fame  or  wealth,  appears  perhaps 
most  plainly  in  his  attitude  to  the  memory  of  Dante. 
This  became  so  notorious  that  it  was  openly  ascribed 
to  envy,  and  his  friend  Boccaccio  bravely  wrote  to  tell 
him  of  the  slander,  expressing  in  the  letter  his  own 
boundless  admiration  for  the  great  dead.  Petrarch's 
reply  is  cold.  He  does  not  use  Dante's  name.  It  is 
the  charge  of  envy  which  troubles  him.  How  could 
he  be  charged  with  envy  of  one  who  had  written 
nobly,  indeed,  but  in  the  common  speech  and  for 
the  common  people,  while  he  had  only  used  it  in  his 
youth  and  half  in  play  ?  How  could  he  who  did  not 
envy  even  Virgil  envy  Dante  ? 

This  egotism  was  fed  by  such  a  banquet  of  admi- 
ration as  has  been  spread  for  few  men.  The  cities 
of  Italy  did  not  wait  for  his  death  to  rival  each  other 
in  honoring  him.  A  decree  of  the  Venetian  Senate 
said  that  no  Christian  philosopher  or  poet  could  be 
compared  to  him.  The  city  of  Arezzo  greeted  him 
with  a  triumphal  procession  and  a  decree  that  the 
house  of  his  birth  might  never  be  altered.  Florence 
bought  the  confiscated  estates  of  his  father  and  pre- 
sented them  to  the  man  "  who  for  centuries  had  no 
equal  and  could  scarcely  find  one  in  the  ages  to 
come,"  "  in  whom  Virgil's  spirit  and  Cicero's  elo- 
quence had  again  clothed  themselves  in  flesh." 


Petrarch  Crowned  at  Rome.  33 

Wherever  he  went  men  strove  who  should  do  him  most 
honor.  An  old  schoolmaster  made  a  long  journey  to 
Naples  to  see  him,  and,  arriving  too  late,  followed  over 
the  Apennines  to  Parma,  where  he  kissed  his  head 
and  hands.  Letters  and  verses  in  basketfuls  brought 
admiration  from  every  part  of  Italy,  from  France, 
Germany,  England,  and  even  from  Greece.  Per- 
haps the  most  prized  of  all  these  symbols  of  admira- 
tion was  the  bestowal  of  the  poet's  crown — a  re- 
vival of  a  traditional  and  seldom-practised  rite.  At 
the  age  of  thirty-six  two  invitations  to  receive  it 
reached  him  on  the  same  day:  one  from  the  Uni- 
versity of  Paris,  and  one  from  the  Roman  Senate. 
He  chose  Rome  as  the  inheritor  of  imperial  dig- 
nity, the  true  centre  of  Christendom.  Led  by  a 
stately  procession  through  the  city  to  the  Capitol, 
he  received  the  crown  from  the  hand  of  a  Senator, 
delivered  a  festal  speech,  and  went  in  procession 
to  St.  Peter's,  where  he  knelt  before  the  altar  of 
the  apostles  and  laid  his  wreath  upon  it.  The  day 
closed  with  a  great  banquet  in  the  house  of  the 
chief  of  the  Roman  nobles.  And  these  distinctions, 
sentimental  as  was  their  form,  exaggerated  as  was 
the  rhetoric  in  which  they  were  phrased,  were  the 
tributes  for  great  service  to  humanity.  Not  that 
Petrarch  discovered  anew  classic  literature,  the  rights 
of  criticism,  or  the  value  of  the  individual.  He  ac- 
complished little  that  was  definite  in  criticism  or 
history.  Roger  Bacon  was  a  more  original  reformer 
of  the  methods  of  science,  and  there  were  men  before 
Petrarch.  But  he  came  in  the  fulness  of  time,  and 
by  the  force  of  genius  gathered  together  and  ex- 


34  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

pressed  the  tendencies  of  his  own  age  in  a  work 
and  a  personality  strong  enough  to  break  the  road 
which  was  to  be  followed  by  four  generations  of 
the  New  Learning.  And  they  were  to  be  the  spirit- 
ual centre  of  the  great  social  movement  of  the 
Renascence,  and  the  strongest  of  those  forces  which 
were  to  limit  the  new  opportunities  and  duties  of 
the  Papacy,  returned  to  the  dignity  of  its  ancient 
seat  in  the  Eternal  City. 


PERIOD  I. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

• 

THE  CONDITION  IN  WHICH  THE  RETURNING  POPE 
FOUND  ITALY  AND  THE  PATRIMONY  OF  ST. 
PETER — THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  GREAT 
SCHISM^ — TWO  VICARS  OF  CHRIST  FIGHT  FOR 
THE  TIARA. 

|HE  Pope  had  come  back  to  Rome  not 
simply  out  of  veneration  for  the  ancient 
seat  of  the  Papacy,  but  because  he  was 
forced  to  defend  to  the  utmost  his  tem- 
poral authority  in  Italy. 
During  his  absence  the  cities  of  Italy  had  been 
exposed  to  two  dangers.  The  first  was  the 
presence  of  great  bands  of  mercenary  soldiers 
with  just  discipline  enough  to  hold  together  and 
fight.  The  loosely  ruled  kingdom  of  Naples,  swarm- 
ing with  brigands,  was  the  regular  school  of  leaders 
for  these  bands,  and  their  ranks  were  recruited  by 
adventurers  from  France,  Germany,  and  England. 
When  unemployed  they  plundered,  and  when  hired 
for  war  they  were  equally  dangerous  to  friend  and 
foe.  Werner  of  Urslingen,  one  of  the  earliest  of 
their  commanders  (1348),  had  this  inscription  on  his 
sword :  "  I  am  Duke  Werner,  leader  of  the  Great 

35 


36  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Company,  the    enemy   of    God,  of    mercy,   and    of 
pity." 

The  second  danger  which  threatened  the  Italian 
cities  was  the  power  of  tyrants,  who,  with  the  help 
of  mercenaries,  absorbed  or  seized  the  rights  of  many 
municipalities  and  turned  them  into  personal  posses- 
sions. These  men  everywhere  refused  to  pay  their 
tributes  to  the  Pope  as  their  feudal  overlord.  And 
to  defend  its  own  rights  and  answer  the  cry  of  the 
suffering  cities  the  Papacy  had,  in  1353,  sent  the 
Spaniard  Gil  d'Albornoz  as  legate  to  Italy.  The 
situation  taxed  even  his  abilities,  for  the  Free  Com- 
panies roamed  like  human  locusts,  devouring  what 
the  tyrants  spared.  Bernabo  Visconti,  the  greatest 
of  these  tyrants,  serves  as  their  type.  He  was  the 
nephew  of  that  Giovanni  Visconti  who,  as  Arch- 
bishop of  Milan,  completed  the  long  process  of  usur- 
pation by  which  his  family  had  become  lords  of  the 
city  and  a  great  tributary  territory.  Bernabo's 
power  was  unlimited,  his  wealth  enormous,  and  he 
used  both  in  a  way  which  suggests  the  worst  of  the 
old  Roman  emperors.  The  central  object  of  the 
administration  of  home  affairs  was  the  Prince's  hunt- 
ing, and  his  people  were  compelled  to  keep  five 
thousand  boar  hounds  and  be  responsible  for  their 
health.  To  interfere  with  the  savage  brutes  meant 
death  by  torture ;  and  the  unfortunates  upon  whose 
hands  one  of  these  unwelcome  guests  died  ran  no 
small  danger  of  being  fed  to  the  rest  of  the  pack. 
He  it  was  who  gave  a  Papal  messenger  carrying  a 
bull  of  excommunication  the  choice  of  being  thrown 
off  the  bridge  into  the  river  or  swallowing  his  owe 


The  Unjust  Stewards.  37 

parchment;  and  answered  the  Archbishop  of  Milan, 
who  refused  his  commands :  "  Know  you  not  that  I 
am  Pope,  emperor,  and  king  in  my  country,  and  that 
God  himself  can't  do  anything  in  it  against  my  will  ?  " 

Against  this  big  tyrant  Albornoz  could  do  little, 
even  with  the  help  of  Florence,  the  type  and  ideal  of 
those  cities  that  were  struggling  to  maintain  their 
ancient  privileges  as  chartered  municipalities  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  But  the  horde  of  little  tyrants 
felt  his  hand,  and  at  his  death  in  1367  a  large  num- 
ber of  the  cities  of  the  Papal  States,  defended  by  new 
citadels  filled  with  Papal  garrisons,  enjoyed  some 
\neasure  of  local  privilege  as  vassals  of  the  Pope. 
But  he  found  no  successor.  And  his  death  let  loose 
on  Italy  a  horde  of  hungry  legates  who  used  his 
citadels  for  oppression  and  plunder.  For  the  most 
part  Frenchmen,  they  trampled  not  only  on  the 
chartered  liberties,  but  also  on  the  feelings,  of  their 
cities  and  provinces. 

Gerard  von  Puy,  for  instance,  Abbot  of  Montma- 
jeur-and  Legate  of  Perugia,  held  the  city  by  the 
terror  of  his  mercenaries  as  with  a  hand  of  iron.  He 
himself  banished  and  killed  and  extorted  money. 
His  nephew  and  favorite  openly  carried  off  two  noble- 
women of  the  city.  The  Governor  answered  the 
protests  of  the  burghers  in  the  first  case  with  an  in- 
decent jest,  and  in  the  second  by  condemning  his 
nephew  to  death  unless  he  returned  the  woman  in 
fifty  days.  And  the  facts  would  seem  to  justify  the 
words  of  that  ardent  lover  of  the  Church,  St.  Cather- 
ine of  Siena,  who,  in  a  letter  to  Gregory  XL,  called 
his  legates  "  incarnate  demons." 


38  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

The  year  before  Gregory  started  to  return  to 
Rome,  the  city  of  Florence,  which  through  the  long 
strife  with  the  empire  had  been  a  faithful  ally  of  the 
Popes,  raised  a  blood-red  banner  with  the  word 
Libertas  in  silver  letters,  and  united  eighty  cities 
of  Tuscany  in  a  League  of  Freedom  against  "  the  bar- 
barians who  have  been  sent  to  Italy  by  the  Papacy 
to  grow  fat  on  our  goods  and  blood." 

City  after  city  rose  at  the  call  of  the  League. 
Citta  di  Castello,  Montefiascone,  and  Narni  were  up 
in  November.  Viterbo  threw  open  her  gates  to  the 
Florentine  Prefect,  and  the  burghers  J6ined  his  troops 
in  storming  the  citadel.  The  first  week  in  Decem- 
ber the  streets  of  Perugia  rang  with  shouts:  "The 
people!  the  people!  Death  to  the  abbot  and  the 
pastors!"  In  quick  succession,  Spoleto,  Assisi, 
Ascoli,  Forli,  Ravenna,  all  the  cities  of  the  Mark, 
the  Romagna,  and  the  Campagna  caught  the  flame 
of  enthusiasm,  drove  the  garrisons  from  their  cita- 
dels, and  raised  the  red  banner  of  the  League.  And 
finally  in  March,  Bologna,  mightiest  of  the  Papal 
vassals,  rose,  crying,  "  Death  to  the  Church!  "  Al- 
most all  Italy,  except  the  great  maritime  states  of 
Genoa  and  Venice,  stood  united  against  the  Pope  in 
a  league  whose  watchwords  were  "  Freedom  "  and 
"  Italy  for  the  Italians."  From  Avignon  the 
alarmed  Gregory  struck  with  all  his  power  at  the 
head  of  the  League.  He  thundered  at  Florence  the 
sternest  anathema  on  the  Papal  records.  It  declared 
every  single  burgher  of  Florence  outlawed  in  goods 
and  person,  bade  every  Christian  country  banish  all 
Florentines,  and  gave  the  right  to  any  one  who 


A  Dangerous  Conclave.  39 

wished  to  seize  their  property  and  make  slaves  of 
them  and  their  families.  But  Florence  would  not 
give  way.  When  the  bull  was  read  in  full  conclave 
to  their  ambassador,  he  fell  on  his  knees  before  a 
crucifix  in  the  audience-room,  and  appealed  to  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Judge  of  the  world,  against  this  sentence 
of  his  Vicar.  It  was  this  spirit  that  had  brought 
Gregory  back  to  Italy  to  save  the  patrimony  of  St. 
Peter.  And  he  found  himself  at  once  plunged  in  a 
miserable  and  desperate  game  of  war  and  diplomacy. 
For  he  could  put  no  dependence  except  on  brutal 
mercenaries  whose  plundering  and  massacres  under 
his  banners  foretold  the  miseries  which  Italy  was  to 
suffer  from  their  kind  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years. 
Gregory  sickened  under  the  anxieties  and  horrors 
of  his  position,  and  on  the  27th  of  March,  1378,  he 
died,  longing  for  France  and  regretting  his  return. 
The  dangerous  position  of  the  Papacy  at  once  be- 
came apparent  when  the  cardinals  met  to  elect  his 
successor.  The  lack  of  any  true  political  basis  for  its 
governmental  authority  over  Rome  exposed  it  con- 
stantly to  the  danger  of  mob  violence  ;  and  the  house 
thus  shaken  by  storm  from  without  was  divided 
against  itself.  For  the  Papacy  was  not  even  in 
theory  a  despotism,  but  an  oligarchy  of  ecclesiastical 
princes.  And  the  Pope  was  supposed  to  seek  con- 
stantly the  advice  and  assistance  of  those  whom 
Urban  V.  (i  362-70),  in  a  letter  to  the  Roman  people, 
called  "  our  brothers  the  cardinals."  The  cardinals 
were  the  leaders  of  the  Roman  clergy,  and  bore  the 
titles  of  the  principal  bishoprics,  parish  churches,  and 
deaconries  in  and  around  Rome.  In  the  election  of 


40  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

the  Bishop  of  Rome,  as  in  that  of  every  other  bishop, 
there  had  been  originally,  according  to  the  ancient 
phrase,  three  elements :  the  will  of  God,  the  choice  of 
the  people,  the  vote  of  the  clergy.  The  choice  of  the 
turbulent  Roman  populace  had  no  weight  for  centuries ; 
but  now  they  were  determined  to  exert  their  power 
at  least  far  enough  to  prevent  the  choice  of  any  one 
born  out  of  Italy.  Sixteen  cardinals  went  into  the 
palace  of  the  Vatican  to  hold  the  election.  Four 
were  Italians,  one  a  Spaniard,  and  the  rest  French- 
men. Already  an  embassy  from  the  city  magistrates 
had  represented  to  the  College  their  need  of  a  Roman, 
at  least  of  an  Italian,  Pope,  that  the  city  might  not 
be  again  sunk  into  poverty  and  dishonor  by  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Papacy.  They  had  promised  a 
quiet  election,  but  they  either  could  or  would  not 
keep  their  promises.  The  great  square  in  front  of 
St.  Peter's  was  filled  with  a  mob,  and  as  the  cardinals 
entered  the  Vatican  the  Roman  populace  entered  with 
them.  For  there  was  a  report  that  the  cardinals  were 
bringing  in  French  troops,  and  suspicious  eyes 
searched  every  room  from  garret  to  cellar,  and  even 
poked  halberds  and  swords  ander  the  beds  to  make 
sure  that  no  soldiers  were  hidden  there.  At  last 
they  left,  but  only  to  pass  the  night  in  the  square 
drinking,  sounding  trumpets,  and  calling  for  a  Pope. 
The  next  morning,  after  mass,  the  cardinals  began 
to  vote.  Instantly  the  bells  of  the  city  rang  storm ; 
and  again  the  whole  populace,  in  arms,  flooded  the 
square  and  surged  against  the  very  doors  of  the  pal- 
ace. Under  these  auspices  twelve  votes  were  cast 
for  the  Archbishop  of  Bari,  a  good  canonist,  who  had 


The  Cu  ria  I  Mach  ine.  4 1 

for  a  time  served  as  vice-chancellor  at  Avignon. 
Ten  days  later,  for  the  first  time  in  ninety  years,  a 
Pope  was  crowned  in  Rome. 

The  new  Pope,  who  took  the  name  of  Urban  VI., 
was  a  man  of  strict  personal  morals  and  stern  ideas 
of  the  duty  of  ecclesiastical  princes,  and  he  had 
his  work  cut  out  for  him.  St.  Bridget,  a  highly 
honored  ascetic  reformer,  in  a  letter  to  his  prede- 
cessor, Gregory  XL,  thus  concisely  expressed  the 
prevalent  opinion  of  the  Papal  court :  "  To  be 
sent  to  the  court  of  Avignon  is  like  being  sent  to 
hell.  There  rules  the  greatest  pride,  an  insatiable 
greed,  the  most  horrible  voluptuousness.  It  is  a 
dreadful  sink  of  awful  simony.  A  house  of  ill  fame 
is  already  more  honored  than  the  Church  of  God." 

And  making  due  allowance  for  the  exaggerations 
usual  both  in  the  compliments  and  invectives  of  the 
time,  the  statement  is  probably  a  fair  one.  But, 
after  all,  the  men  pf  the  Papal  court  were  only  the 
results  of  a  system  of  abuses  so  inveterate  that  they 
regarded  its  wrongs  as  rightful  privileges.  The  ad- 
ministration of  the  Church,  steadily  centralized  by  the 
great  Popes  from  Hildebrand  to  Boniface  for  pur- 
poses of  reform  and  to  humble  the  empire,  had  dur- 
ing the  Babylonian  Captivity  grown  into  a  great 
ecclesiastical  bureau,  the  profits  of  whose  patronage 
were  enormous  and  its  corruption  notorious.  The 
Papal  court  was  to  a  great  extent  flooded  by  the 
scions  of  noble  houses  spending  the  incomes  of  accu- 
mulated benefices  in  luxury,  and  finding  in  the  pur- 
ple of  a  prince  of  the  Church  only  the  opportunity  to 
advance  the  fortunes  of  their  friends  by  ecclesiastical 


42  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

politics.  The  reformer  Urban  was  forced  without 
supporters  upon  this  corrupt  old  machine  by  an 
uprising  of  the  people,  and  the  stout,  red-faced  little 
man,  with  his  rash  temper  and  his  unforgiving  mood, 
honest  and  brave  as  he  was,  possessed  neither  the 
breadth  nor  the  self-control  for  his  task. 

Within  a  week  of  the  day  when  he  set  the  crown 
on  his  head  Urban  publicly  called  the  Cardinal 
Orsini  a  "  ninny."  He  fell  upon  the  Cardinal  La 
Grange  in  full  conclave,  accusing  him  of  having  be- 
trayed France  for  gold  and  of  trying  to  betray  the 
Church.  Finally  La  Grange  rose.  "  You  are  Pope 
now,"  he  said,  "  and  I  cannot  answer  you.  But  if  you 
still  were  what  you  were  a  few  days  ago,  a  little  Arch- 
bishop of  Bari,  I  would  say  to  you, '  Little  Archbishop,' 
you  are  a  shameless  liar.' '  And  turning  on  his 
heel,  he  left  the  room.  "  Holy  Father,"  said  Robert 
of  Geneva,  "  you  show  little  honor  to  the  cardinals, 
which  is  against  the  customs  of^your  predecessors. 
Perhaps  our  turn  will  come  to  show  little  honor  to 
you." 

It  seemed  an  evil  hour  for  dissension,  when  Urban 
had  to  guide  the  ship  of  St.  Peter  through  so  great 
a  storm.  The  war  with  the  League  of  Freedom  still 
dragged  along  its  fruitless  horrors.  And  yet  this 
outward  danger  seemed  greater  than  it  was.  For 
the  centre  of  the  revolt  was  broken  when  the  Pope 
came  back  to  Rome.  The  power  of  the  splendid 
ideal  of  the  Papacy  over  the  minds  of  men  could 
only  be  obscured  by  the  most  pressing  abuses,  and 
the  return  from  Avignon  had  changed  the  Domini- 
um  Temporale  itself  from  a  symbol  of  French  tyranny 


The  House  Divided  against  Itself.       43 

into  a  centre  and  visible  expression  of  that  moral  and 
religious  headship  of  Rome  which  was  a  pride  to 
every  Italian.  The  people  of  the  Italian  cities  had 
neither  the  patience  nor  the  self-control  to  be  worthy 
of  freedom.  They  would  not  accept  military  disci- 
pline and  could  do  nothing  but  street  righting;  and 
their  local  hatreds  were  so  strong  that  nothing  but  the 
pressure  of  unbearable  suffering  could  unite  them. 
When  the  chief  cause  of  their  revolt  was  thus  re- 
moved, religious  feeling,  jealousy,  and  diplomacy 
began  to  break  the  League.  Urban  did  not  play  his 
part  badly,  and  three  months  after  his  coronation  he 
made  peace  with  Florence,  the  last  antagonist  of  the 
Church. 

But  civil  war  was  breaking  out  in  the  Curia.  By 
the  end  of  June  all  but  the  four  Italian  cardinals 
were  assembled  in  Anagni,  and  the  Papal  treasurer 
joined  them  with  the  tiara  and  the  crown  jewels. 
Negotiations  were  in  vain.  On  the  Qth  of  August 
the  thirteen  non- Italian  cardinals  announced  that  the 
election  of  Urban  was  forced  and  uncanonical.  And 
on  the  3  ist  of  October,  1378,  having  been  joined  by 
three  of  the  Italians,  they  elected  and  crowned  a  new 
Pope,  who  took  the  name  of  Clement  VII.  He  was 
the  Cardinal  Robert  of  Geneva,  a  little  pale-faced 
man  of  distinguished  manners  and  a  defect  in  gait 
which  he  strove  sedulously  to  hid,e.  The  second  son 
of  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  he  was  connected  by  blood  or 
marriage  with  many  of  the  greatest  houses  of 
Europe,  understood  four  languages,  spoke  eloquently, 
and  dressed  magnificently. 

The  impending  schism  had  everywhere  horrified 


44  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

the  faithful  churchmen,  who  hoped  for  better  days. 
St.  Catherine  of  Siena  wrote  beseeching  Cardinal 
Pedro  de  Luna  to  avert  the  danger  of  a  quarrel  be- 
tween "  the  Christ  on  earth  and  his  disciples." 
"Everything  else,  war,  shame,  sorrows  of  all  kinds, 
were  only  a  straw  and  a  shadow  compared  to  this 
misfortune." 

But  the  schism  once  made,  in  spite  of  its  horror, 
the  world  promptly  chose  sides.  Flanders,  England, 
the  greater  number  of  the  states  of  the  German 
Empire,  and  all  North  Italy  renewed  their  allegiance 
to  Urban.  But  France,  Savoy,  Scotland,  Spain,  and 
Naples  received  the  legates  of  the  Antipope.  And 
two  Vicars  of  Christ  waged  pitiless  war  with  mer- 
cenary troops  around  the  walls  of  Rome. 

To  sustain  his  falling  cause,  Urban,  deserted  by 
all  the  Princes  of  the  Church,  appointed  twenty-nine 
cardinals  at  one  creation,  of  whom  twenty-two  were 
Italians.  But  five  refused  the  dignity ;  and  the  rest 
could  hardly  bear  the  harsh  temper  of  the  Pope  who 
made  them.  In  the  winter  of  1385  Urban  was  in 
the  strong  castle  of  Lucera,1  perched  among  the  great 
chestnuts  of  the  hills  between  Salerno  and  Naples. 
Seven  cardinals  suspected  of  conspiracy  languished 
half  clad  and  fed  in  the  cold  dungeons.  One  of 
them,  broken  by  disease  and  age,  was  brought  into 
the  great  arched  hall  and  tortured  until  the  Papal 
secretary  who  has  left  the  description,  unable  to  bear 
the  sight,  begged  permission  to  leave  the  castle 
because  of  a  pretended  headache.  But  Urban, 
walking  up  and  down  on  the  terrace  below,  read 

1  Now  Nocera. 


The  Popes  Revenge.  45 

aloud  the  office  for  the  day,  that  the  execution- 
ers, reminded  of  his  presence  by  the  sound  of  his 
voice,  might  not  be  slack  in  their  work.  When  a 
Neapolitan  army  camped  among  the  vineyards 
around  the  castle,  the  besiegers  might  see  how  the 
fierce  old  Pope,  his  face  flaming  with  impotent  rage, 
hurled  out  every  day  another  anathema  that  devoted 
them  to  perdition,  even  as  the  lights  borne  at  his 
side  were  hurled  into  darkness  at  the  end  of  the 
curse. 

Freed  by  a  sudden  attack  of  mercenaries  collected 
by  his  allies,  Urban  sought  refuge  in  Genoa.  One 
of  his  wretched  captives,  unable  to  bear  the  rapid 
journey,  was  put  out  of  the  way  on  the  road.  An 
Englishman  among  them  owed  his  freedom  to  the 
intercession  of  his  King.  Five  others  were  carried 
into  the  gates  of  the  building  of  the  Knights  of  St. 
John,  assigned  by  the  city  for  Urban's  residence. 
One  tradition  says  they  were  sewn  up  alive  in  sacks 
and  cast  into  the  harbor  by  night ;  another  that  they 
were  starved  or  strangled  and  buried  in  the  cellar. 
It  is  only  certain  that  men  never  saw  them  come 
out  of  those  gates  into  the  light  of  day. 


PERIOD   I. 


CHAPTER  V. 

JOHN    WICLIF     OF     ENGLAND,   AND     HIS     PROTEST 
AGAINST   PAPAL   WAR. 

|HE  scandal  of  open  war  for  the  Papal 
crown,  between  a  ruthless  tyrant  and  a 
jaded  man  of  the  world  who  loved  the 
game  of  ecclesiastical  politics,  aroused  in- 
dignant protest  in  the  hearts  of  all  lovers 
of  religion.  And  one  great  churchman  was  driven 
by  the  shock  of  it  to  change  his  lifelong  demand  for 
reform  into  an  attack  on  the  organization  of  the  Church 
and  the  theory  of  the  Papacy. 

John  Wiclif,  a  doctor  of  Oxford,  was  acknowledged 
to  be  the  most  learned  man  of  England,  and  his 
fame  abroad  would  probably  have  ranked  him  in  the 
international  guild  of  scholars  as  the  most  distin- 
guished university  teacher  of  his  day.  In  addition 
to  this  fame  as  a  scholar  he  possessed  great  popular 
influence  as  a  bold  and  powerful  preacher  in  the 
mother  tongue.  In  each  of  these  two  characters  he 
had  protested  against  the  abuses  of  the  Papacy  at 
Avignon.  As  a  scholastic  he  expressed  his  protest 
in  the  treatises  "  De'  Dominio  Civili "  and  "  De 
Dominio  Divino,"  which  were  probably  intended, 

46 


Wicltf  the  Scholastic.  47 

under  the  single  title  "  De  Dominio,"  to  form 
the  introduction  to  his  great  work,  "  Summa  in 
Theologia." 

The  prologue  to  the  treatise  "De  Dominio  Divino" 
announces  his  intention  of  beginning  a  course  of  di- 
vinity by  an  exposition  of  the  doctrine  of  Lordship 
based  upon  Scripture  proofs ;  and  the  author  at  once 
proceeds,  with  unlimited  learning,  to  seek  a  base  for 
his  doctrine  in  scholastic  metaphysics.  He  discusses, 
in  passing,  the  nature  of  being;  the  relation  of  uni- 
versals  to  sensible  objects;  the  different  stages  of 
being,  such  as  essentia  and  esse,  pro  se  esse,  esse  intel- 
ligibile,  and  esse  actuate,  and  their  mutual  relations ; 
the  possibility  of  demonstrating  faith,  and  the  right 
of  free  inquiry;  the  eternity  of  the  world,  with  a 
criticism  of  various  opinions  on  the  subject;  the 
question  of  necessity  and  free  will,  and  the  relation  of 
the  persons  of  the  Trinity;  and  the  demonstration 
of  such  ideas  as  "  The  process  by  which  the  primary 
ens  is  specificated  is  substantiation,  rendering  it  capa- 
ble of  acquiring  accidents  "  makes  it  rather  difficult 
reading  for  these  degenerate  days.  It  is  only  in  the 
last  chapter  that  he  becomes  practical  and  to  us 
readable.  For  he  then  develops  the  idea  that  God 
being  the  immediate  Lord  of  all  things,  human  prop- 
erty and  authority  are  always  held  as  vassals  of  God 
by  a  tenure  tested  by  due  service  to  him.  When  this 
conclusion  was  again  fed  into  the  mill  of  scholastic 
logic  there  was  ground  out  the  conclusion  that  prop- 
erty and  authority  were  forfeited  by  sin — a  conclusion 
which,  when  applied,  not  as  a  practical  judgment  to 
any  given  unendurable  wrong,  but  held  as  an  abstract 


48  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

principle,  was  fatal  to  the  existence  of  every  institu- 
tion of  human  society. 

But  when  Wiclif  stepped  out  of  his  study  he  showed 
the  man  behind  the  great  scholastic.  The  traditional 
logic  of  his  class  bore  him  at  times,  with  the  clumsy 
gallop  of  an  animated  hobby-horse,  whither  he  would 
not.  But  when  he  dismounted  he  could  give  effect  to 
the  keen  common  sense  of  his  practical  judgment  in 
phrases  which  spoke  to  the  noble  and  the  ploughboy 
— phrases  which  smote  spiritual  wickedness  in  high 
places  like  winged  arrows  of  the  wrath  of  God.  What 
gave  point  to  these  weapons  was  the  knowledge  of  the 
Bible  which  he  was  spreading  among  the  common 
people  of  England.  The  art  of  preaching  had  sunk 
very  low.  Large  numbers  of  the  parish  priests  had 
given  it  up  altogether,  and  those  who  practised  it  were 
apt  to  inflict  upon  their  hearers  the  linked  dulness,  long 
drawn  out,  by  which  syllogism  gave  birth  to  syllogism 
in  the  endless  genealogies  of  scholastic  discussion. 
The  popular  begging  friars,  on  the  other  hand,  amused 
and  demoralized  their  hearers  by  coarse  jests  and  old 
wives'  fables,  drawn  from  the  legends  of  the  saints, 
from  the  Gesta  Romanorum,  or  even  from  the  dis- 
torted stories  of  Greek  and  Roman  mythology. 
These  abuses  were  flagrant,  and  known  of  all  men ; 
and  Wiclif,  the  most  celebrated  teacher  in  England, 
ex-member  of  Parliament  and  royal  ambassador,  volu- 
minous author  and  faithful  parish  priest,  who  had 
voiced,  amid  the  applause  of  a  people,  the  nation's 
protest  against  Papal  aggression,  set  himself  to  the 
task  of  showing  a  better  way.  He  was  too  much  a 
child  of  his  age  to  be  free  in  the  pulpit  from  some  of 


Wiclif  and  the  Bible.  49 

the  very  faults  he  condemned.  But  beneath  the 
rhetorical  ornaments  and  cumbrous  construction  of 
the  celebrated  scholastic,  his  parishioners  and  the 
chapels  of  Oxford  heard  a  new  tone  of  manly  direct- 
ness denouncing  sin  and  calling  them  to  the  life  of 
faith.  And  from  chapel  and  lecture-room  went  an 
organized  band  of  "  Poor  Priests,"  clad  in  coarse  red 
garments,  barefoot,  and  staff  in  hand,  to  carry  the 
sacred  fire  now  into  a  town  market-place,  now  to  the 
village  church  of  a  friendly  rector,  and,  when  that 
was  closed,  standing  upon  some  convenient  tomb  to 
preach  to  the  living  among  the  graves  of  the  dead. 

Selecting  the  best  of  these  friends  and  pupils, 
Wiclif  began  and,  by  their  help,  finished  a  transla- 
tion of  the  Latin  Bible.  The  noble  who  read  Nor- 
man French  had  long  known  the  Bible  in  that 
tongue ;  so  long  as  the  churl  had  spoken  Anglo- 
Saxon  he  could  read  much  of  it ;  but  now  for  gener- 
ations there  had  been  no  version  intended  for  the 
men  and  women  of  England  who  worked  with  their 
hands.  And  Wiclif,  laying  aside  the  hindrance  of 
a  Latinized  style  formed  in  the  practice  of  the  subtle 
hair-splitting  of  his  traditional  metaphysics,  made  or 
inspired  one  which,  together  with  the  poems  of 
Chaucer,  exerted  on  Middle  English  the  same  crea- 
tive power  that  Shakespeare  and  the  King  James 
version  had  on  Modern  English. 

To  the  man  who  was  thus  passing  from  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  Church  to  the  truth  she  symbolized, 
behind  the  official  to  the  idea  of  his  duty,  through 
worship  and  theology  to  religion  as  a  new  life,  the 
fires  of  war  blazing  between  two  cursing  Popes 


50  TTte  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

seemed  the  very  blast  of  hell.  He  had  hailed  with 
joy  the  election  of  Urban  as  a  "  Catholic  head,  an 
evangelical  man,  a  man  who,  in  the  work  of  reform- 
ing the  Church,  follows  the  due  order  by  beginning 
with  himself  and  the  members  of  his  own  household. 
From  his  works,  therefore,  it  behooves  us  to  believe 
that  he  is  the  head  of  our  Church."  But  when 
Urban,  going  from  bad  to  worse,  called  England  to 
arms  for  his  cause,  and  the  Bishop  of  Norwich  used 
the  authority  of  the  Vicar  of  Christ  to  urge  all 
Christians  to  bring  fire  and  sword  among  the  mea- 
dows and  cities  of  Flanders,  Wiclif  poured  out  pam- 
phlets of  protest  in  Latin  and  English.  And  his  wrath, 
slowly  gathering  head  and  finding  ever  sterner  and 
clearer  expression,  bore  him  where  his  logic  had 
never  carried  him,  through  indignant  appeal  to  the 
Pope  to  obey  Christ,  to  the  total  rejection  of  the 
whole  system  which  made  such  a  perversion  possi- 
ble, and,  finally,  to  a  denunciation  of  the  Papacy  as 
Antichrist. 

For  this  revolt  made  by  Wiclif  the  man,  Wiclif 
the  scholar  had  been  slowly  preparing  by  progressive 
changes  in  theology.  Not  that  these  changes  ever 
carried  him  entirely  outside  the  limits  of  mediaeval 
thought  in  regard  to  the  teaching  of  the  Bible.  The 
great  system  of  Catholic  theology  had  come  into 
being,  to  use  the  mixed  metaphor  of  Paul,  as  a 
growth  and  a  building,  owing  much  to  the  uncon- 
scious logical  development  which  led  the  thoughts  of 
men  from  age  to  age,  as  the  novelty  of  one  genera- 
tion became  the  orthodoxy  of  another,  and  much  to 
the  labor  of  the  great  thinkers  who  served  the  Church. 


Wiclif's  Heresy.  51 

Wiclif  was  led  to  criticise  parts  of  this  edifice,  but 
he  never  rejected  the  chief  corner-stone — the  idea 
that  Christ  was  a  second  Moses,  a  divine  Lawgiver, 
and  the  Gospel  a  new  law.  Of  the  three  elements  of 
the  relation  of  the  soul  to  God,  knowledge,  trust,  and 
obedience,  he  emphasizes  the  first  and  last,  but 
scarcely  touches  the  second.  He  does  not  image  sal- 
vation as  a  gift  of  God's  love,  coming  to  whosoever 
will  receive  it  in  the  childlike  confidence  which  gives 
to  all  life  a  filial  character,  but  is  fain  to  regard  it  as 
given  by  God  in  some  sort  as  an  exchange  for  the 
effects  wrought  in  a  man's  thought,  feeling,  and  deeds 
by  faith.  He  ought  not,  therefore,  to  be  ranked  ac- 
cording to  our  modern  nomenclature  among  "  Prot- 
estants." For,  disregarding  the  isolated  heresies 
ultimately  condemned  by  the  Church,  his  theological 
system  as  a  whole  is  to  be  classified  as  "  Catholic." 

His  most  important  attack  upon  the  theology 
of  his  time  was  in  that  point  where  the  doctrines  of 
God  as  the  Author,  man  as  the  object,  Christ  as  the 
Mediator,  of  salvation,  and  the  Church  as  his  visible 
representative,  meet — the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's 
Supper.  Stripped  of  technical  language,  the  process 
which  led  him  to  this  may  be  briefly  indicated  as 
follows.  So  far  as  that  department  of  theology 
which  discussed  the  Church  was  concerned,  the 
Catholic  theory  had  its  logical  base  in  the  idea  that 
clergy  were  a  distinct  order  of  men.  They  might 
differ  among  themselves  in  honor  through  all  the 
ascending  scale  of  a  complex  hierarchy,  but  between 
all  of  them  and  the  laity  there  was  a  great  gulf  fixed. 
The  impulse  which  developed  this  idea,  and  de- 


52  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

fended  it  by  the  practice  of  celibacy  and  the  doctrine 
of  the  sacrament  of  ordination,  was  the  desire  to  give 
to  the  clergy  a  superior  sanctity  because  they  were 
priests  ministering  at  the  altar  of  God  in  the  sacrifice 
of  the  eucharist,  in  which  they  made  sacrifice  for  the 
sins  of  the  people  and  were  the  mediators  of  the 
grace  needed  for  daily  living.  Upon  the  clergy  the 
Church  rested,  not,  indeed,  in  the  fully  and  clearly 
developed  doctrines  of  Catholic  theology,  but  in  those 
phrases  and  conceptions  which  were  popularly  taught 
and  accepted  as  representing  that  theology.  In 
opposition  Wiclif  taught  that  the  centre  of  gravity 
of  the  Church  was  not  in  earth,  but  in  heaven,  in  the 
counsel  of  God ;  for  the  Church  consisted  of  "  the 
whole  body  of  the  elect."  So,  while  he  nowhere 
uses  the  Pauline  phrase,  "  the  universal  priesthood  of 
believers,"  he  asserts  the  duty  of  believers  to  rebuke 
an  unworthy  priest,  nay,  if  need  be,  to  judge  and 
depose  him ;  and  he  defended  this  assertion  by  such 
precedents  from  the  canon  law  as  the  order  of  Greg- 
ory VII.  that  congregations  should  not  hear  mass 
from  married  priests.  He  even  asserts,  "  Nor  do  I 
see  but  that  the  ship  of  Peter  may  be  filled  for  a  time 
with  laity  alone."  It  is  easy  to  understand  that  one 
who  wrote  thus  for  the  early  chapters  of  his  "  Sum- 
mary of  Theology  "  should  be  led,  just  before  the 
end  of  his  life,  to  criticise  the  doctrine  of  the  sacra- 
ments. 

In  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  Wiclif 
received  it  from  the  Church,  were  involved  a  practice 
and  two  ideas  not  found  in  the  New  Testament:1  the 
1  This  is,  of  course,  denied  by  Roman  Catholic  apologists. 


Wiclif  and  Transubstantiation.          53 

withholding  of  the  cup  from  the  laity,  transubstan- 
tiation,  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  mass.  And  he  was 
the  first  of  three  successive  protesters,  each  of 
whom  rejected  one  of  these  things.  John  Huss 
(burned  1415)  was  to  bequeath  to  his  followers  a  pro- 
test against  the  withholding  of  the  cup.  Martin 
Luther  (protested  1517),  passing  for  the  first  time 
entirely  outside  of  medieval  theology,  was  to  attack 
the  fundamental  conception  of  the  mass,  as  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  death  of  Christ — to  deny  that  the  sacra- 
ment was  a  sacrifice  offered  to  God  to  make  continually 
renewed  propitiation  for  those  sins  by  which  the  peo- 
ple break  the  law  of  salvation.  Wiclif  attacked  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation.  This  doctrine  was 
formed  by  the  schoolmen,  and  can  only  be  stated  in 
the  technical  terms  of  their  logic.  It  asserts  that 
after  the  words  of  consecration  the  bread  and  wine 
are  changed,  not  in  their  accidents,  but  in  their  sub- 
stance, into  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ.  The 
accidents  of  a  thing  are  the  phenomena  by  which  it 
is  perceived,  such  as  taste,  smell,  hardness.  The 
substance  is  a  non-sensible  something,  only  to  be  laid 
hold  of  by  the  mind,  which  is  behind  all  accidents. 
And  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation  asserts  that, 
while  the  bread  and  wine  of  the  Lord's  Supper  taste 
and  look  like  bread  and  wine,  they  are  actually  and 
substantially  the  flesh  and  blood  of  Christ.  Before 
the  Papal  schism  Wiclif  certainly  accepted  this  teach- 
ing, as  when,  for  instance,  he  wrote  of  Christ,  "  He 
was  a  priest  when  in  the  supper  he  made  his  own 
body."  But  the  mood  induced  by  what  seemed  to 
him  a  flagrant  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  Papal 


54  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

theory,  led  him  to  reexamine  and  reject  the  doctrine 
of  transubstantiation  on  threefold  grounds :  of  Scrip- 
ture, which  never  suggests  the  idea  and  by  implica- 
tion several  times  denies  it ;  of  tradition,  because  it 
originated  in  the  later  and  corrupt  ages  of  the  Church 
and  was  unknown  to  Jerome  and  Augustine ;  of  rea- 
son, because  it  assumes  ideas  which,  tested  by  the 
very  logic  it  employs,  are  false  and  self-contradictory. 
And  he  drew  his  argument  to  a  point  in  a  stern 
denunciation  of  the  "  idolatry  of  the  priests  of  Baal, 
who  worship  gods  they  have  made,"  and  the  pre- 
sumption of  attributing  to  "  synners  the  power  to 
make  God." 

Members  of  the  Church  were,  as  in  the  Roman 
communion  they  still  are,  trained  by  the  whole 
drift  of  the  usual  discipline  and  by  every  act  of 
their  public  worship  to  centre  the  expression  of 
belief  and  religious  feeling  in  this  sacrament.  And 
her  apologists  instinctively  feel  that  it  is  the  means 
by  which  the  mediaeval  theology  summarized  by 
Thomas  Aquinas  passes  over  into  the  religious  life 
of  the  people.  It  is  easy  to  understand,  there- 
fore, that  all  who  reverenced  the  ancient  and  ac- 
cepted forms  of  learning  and  piety  felt  a  shock  of 
horror  at  this  attack  and  the  words  in  which  it  was 
expressed.  And  all  the  hirelings  and  greedy  place- 
men who  had  fought  Wiclif  so  long  were  quick  to 
take  advantage  of  this  revulsion  of  honest  religious 
feeling.  When  he  had  been  summoned  before  the 
Bishop  of  London  for  resisting  Papal  aggression 
upon  the  rights  of  England,  he  had  walked  into  court 
between  the  Grand  Marshal  of  the  realm  and  the 


The  Defenders  of  Orthodoxy.  55 

King's  uncle,  and  they  could  do  nothing  against  him, 
because,  the  people  held  him  for  a  prophet.  When 
a  bull  from  Rome  had  summoned  him  to  trial  on  a 
charge  of  heresy  based  on  nineteen  theses  drawn  from 
his  writings,  the  organized  scholarship  of  England,  as 
represented  by  Oxford  University,  rose  in  his  defence, 
the  burghers  of  London  rilled  the  court-room  with 
menacing  murmurs,  and  Sir  Henry  Clifford,  in  the 
name  of  the  Princess  of  Wales,  peremptorily  de- 
manded a  suspension  of  judgment.  But  from  the  time 
when  he  passed  beyond  demands  for  the  reform  of 
abuses  to  an  attack  upon  the  organization  of  the 
Church,  his  enemies  and  her  defenders  began  to  gain 
upon  him.  Groan  as  men  might  under  ecclesiastical 
abuses,  peremptory  as  were  the  demands  for  reform 
from  every  quarter  of  Europe,  the  love  of  the  ancient 
mother  was  still  strong  and  tender,  and  the  power  of 
the  great  ideal  of  a  visible  Vicar  of  Christ  still  un- 
broken over  the  human  heart.  There  was  as  yet  no 
social  institution  whose  ruling  powers  were  willing 
to  defend  any  one  whose  protest  involved  a  clear 
denial  of  any  essential  or  fundamental  element  of 
Church  doctrine  or  organization.  William  Courtenay, 
Bishop  of  London,  fourth  son  of  the  Earl  of  Devon- 
shire, and  on  his  mother's  side  a  great-grandson  of 
Edward  I.,  had  been  made  Primate  of  England  after 
the  murder  of  the  mild  Sudbury  by  the  insurgent 
peasants.  He  was  an  able,  stern,  and  zealous  ec- 
clesiastic, and  a  court  under  his  presidency,  in  the 
spring  of  1382,  condemned  ten  theses  as  heretical 
One,  "  that  God  ought  to  obey  the  devil,"  was  prob- 
ably only  Wiclif's  statement,  in  the  form  of  one  of 


The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 


those  paradoxes  loved  by  the  schoolmen,  that  God 
permitted  evil  and  Christ  suffered  himself  to  be 
tempted.  The  rest  related,  directly  or  indirectly,  to 
the  sacrament  of  the  altar.  Armed  with  this  general 
condemnation,  which  mentioned  no  names,  the  Arch- 
bishop silenced  first  Wiclif's  scholars.  By  the  help 
of  the  young  King  he  repressed  the  itinerant  preach- 
ing, and  with  the  aid  of  the  conservative  minority  of 
Oxford,  frightened,  arrested,  or  silenced  the  ablest 
of  Wiclif's  friends.  He  was  too  cautious  to  attack 
Wiclif  himself,  who,  defended  by  the  gratitude  of 
the  people,  the  power  of  a  skilful  appeal  to  Parlia- 
ment, and  their  jealousy  of  the  abuse  of  the  royal 
prerogative  in  the  proceedings,  remained  untouched 
in  his  rural  parish  of  Lutterworth.  The  net  was 
drawing  round  him,  and  he  lectured  no  more  at  Ox- 
ford. But  in  the  English  speech,  to  which  he  had 
given  form,  he  spoke  by  sermon  and  tract  to  the 
people  of  England.  And  then  he  passed  suddenly 
from  strife  to  peace.  His  assistant  has  told  how  a 
stroke  of  paralysis,  falling  on  him  at  the  moment  of 
the  elevation  of  the  host,  while  he  was  hearing  mass 
in  his  own  church,  lamed  that  powerful  tongue  and, 
three  days  later,  stilled  the  brain  and  heart. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  how  numerous  his  followers, 
who  came  to  be  called  Lollards,  were.  At  all  events, 
though  spared  for  nearly  twenty  years  by  most  of 
the  bishops,  and  protected  by  a  party  in  Parliament, 
they  never  gained  cohesion  and  power  enough  to 
make  any  effective  move  for  the  reforms  demanded 
by  their  teacher.  The  accession  of  the  house  of 
Lancaster  to  the  throne  seems  to  have  been  accom- 


Dead,  yet  Speaketh.  57 

panied  by  an  ecclesiastical  reaction,  strengthening 
the  conservative  hierarchy.  In  1401  Parliament 
passed  the  statute  De  Haeretico  Comburendo,  which 
for  the  first  time  made  all  heretics  guilty  of  death  by 
the  law  of  England.  And  under  its  pressure  Lollardy 
rapidly  sank  out  of  sight,  emerging  dimly  behind  the 
abortive  revolt  for  which  Sir  John  Oldcastle  suffered 
death  in  1414.  After  that  its  doctrines,  practices, 
and  protests  may  have  lived  secretly  among  the 
peasants,  but  it  never  appears  again  as  a  recognized 
force  in  life  or  an  effective  power  in  Church  or  State. 

It  was  Wiclif  the  scholar  whose  work  lived  on  most 
clearly  from  age  to  age.  His  English  Bible  was  a 
lasting  appeal  from  all  tradition  back  to  the  earliest 
records  of  the  source  of  Christianity,  an  assertion  that 
the  knowledge  of  religion  belongs  to  the  common 
people,  and  that  its  plainest  and  most  direct  appeals 
must  always  be  submitted  to  the  common  judgment 
and  conscience  of  mankind.  His  other  writings  also 
lived  when  he  was  dead.  Adalbert  Ranconis,  a  great 
teacher  of  the  recently  founded  University  of  Prague, 
bequeathed  a  foundation  for  travelling  scholarships, 
to  enable  Bohemian  students  to  visit  Oxford  and 
Paris.  Their  transcriptions  of  Wiclif's  later  manu- 
scripts are  still  in  existence,  and  through  them  his 
ideas  became  the  source  of  the  first  truly  national 
reform,  the  first  demand  for  the  abolition  of  ecclesi- 
astical abuses  which  united  a  whole  people  in  willing- 
ness to  resist  the  authority  of  Rome  to  determine 
doctrine  and  rule  the  conscience. 

Five  years  later  Urban  died,  fighting  to  the  last 
for  the  possessions  of  the  Church  and  his  own  au- 


58  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

thority.  Theodoric  of  Niem,  the  vivid  chronicler  of 
the  schism,  says,  "  He  had  a  hard  heart,"  and  quotes 
upon  him  the  proverb,  "  Sudden  honor  always  makes 
a  poor  man  over-proud."  He  took  up  with  rash  and 
obstinate  self-confidence  the  tremendous  burden  of 
the  Papacy,  before  which  the  good  have  always 
shrunk  and  the  strong  and  wise  trembled.  And  he 
died  hated  even  by  those  who  obeyed  him.  The 
proud  puritan,  with  narrow  sympathies  and  intolerant 
temper,  was  not  large  enough  for  his  opportunity. 
Because  he  could  not  distinguish  between  his  per- 
sonal animosity  and  zeal  in  the  cause  he  fought  for, 
he  brought  upon  the  Church  evils  greater  than  those 
from  which  he  tried,  with  the  sternest  honesty  of 
intent,  to  save  her. 


PERIOD   I. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

POPE  AND  ANTIPOPE — THE  WHITE  PENITENTS  AT 
ROME — THE  SIEGE  OF  AVIGNON — THE  FOL- 
LOWERS OF  PETRARCH,  THE  HUMANISTS,  OR 
MEN  OF  THE  NEW  LEARNING. 

HE  death  of  Urban  did  not  check  in  the 
least  the  struggle  for  the  Papal  tiara,  which 
was  to  drag  its  slow  length  along  amid 
treachery,  bloodshed,  and  bribery  for 
forty  years.  The  Popes  on  either  side 
are  distinguished  by  nothing  but  their  names  and  the 
varying  degrees  of  skill  with  which  they  avoided 
yielding  to  the  growing  demand  of  Christendom  for 
a  General  Council  to  allay  the  schism.  The  record 
of  their  intrigues  is  dull  and  unprofitable,  and  even 
the  steady  discharge  of  their  mutual  anathemas  has 
a  stereotyped  and  unreal  tone,  like  stage  thunder. 
About  the  only  things  in  the  story  of  the  Papacy 
during  these  years  which  the  muse  of  history  can 
record  without  yawning  are,  perhaps,  the  scattered 
evidences  of  the  deep  religious  feeling  of  Europe, 
and  the  firm  attachment  of  men  to  the  institu- 
tions and  customs  of  the  Church,  which  remained 
unshaken  through  all  confessed  abuse,  and  un- 

59 


60  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

rebuffed  by  the  steady  refusals  of  the  demand  for 
reform. 

Boniface  IX.  proclaimed,  in  1390,  a  jubilee  pil- 
grimage to  Rome,  and  the  gifts  of  the  pilgrims  from 
Germany,  Hungary,  Bohemia,  Poland,  and  England 
filled  up  the  empty  treasury.  In  advance  his  agents 
had  sold  all  over  the  world  vast  numbers  of  indul- 
gences, which  secured  to  the  purchasers  all  the 
spiritual  benefits  of  the  pilgrimage  for  the  price  the 
journey  would  have  cost.  Ten  years  later  the  cen- 
tury jubilee  brought  crowds  of  pilgrims,  some  even 
from  France,  which  obeyed  the  other  Pope. 

More  remarkable  evidences  of  attachment  to  relig- 
ion were  the  processions  of  the  White  Companies  of 
Flagellants.  The  Habit  of  flagellation  grew  up  in  the 
cloisters  as  a  means  of  keeping  the  flesh  under,  an  ex- 
pression of  penitence  for  sin,  and  a  method  of  prepay- 
ing the  penalties  of  purgatory.  It  was  strongly  de- 
fended as  a  useful  discipline  and  a  pious  exercise  by 
the  celebrated  Peter  Damiani  in  the  eleventh  century. 
Mutual  public  flagellation  by  companies  of  laity  had, 
however,  been  discountenanced  by  Church  and  State. 
But  when  the  black  death  desolated  Europe  in  the 
middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  such  companies  had 
appeared,  journeying  through  the  cities  of  Germany, 
beating  one  another  in  the  market-places,  and  reading 
a  letter  from  Christ,  which  they  said  had  dropped 
from  heaven.  Nine  thousand  of  them  passed  through 
the  city  of  Strassburg  in  three  months.  At  first  the 
clergy  were  powerless  to  stop  the  custom,  but  in  six 
months  the  hysteric  excitement  was  repressed  by  the 
civil  and  ecclesiastical  authorities,  and  before  the  end 


The  White  Flagellants.  61 

of  the  year  a  Papal  bull  forbade  it  as  schismatic.  It 
thus  became  a  method  of  expression  for  heretic  and 
anti-hierarchical  spirits,  and  a  number  of  its  secret 
practisers  perished  at  the  stake.  But  in  the  year 
1397  there  suddenly  appeared  in  Genoa  companies 
of  people  clothed  in  white  and  wearing  great  masks 
with  holes  cut  for  the  eyes.  They  marched  in  pro- 
cession, singing  hymns,  and  beating  each  other  in 
pairs  with  scourges.  The  habit  spread  over  all  Italy. 
The  Flagellants  of  Florence  were  reckoned  at  forty 
thousand.  Some  cities  forbade  their  entrance,  and 
when  they  approached  Rome  the  Pope  sent  four 
hundred  lancers  to  turn  them  back.  But  the  Captain 
and  all  his  men  joined  the  procession,  which  included 
also  many  priests  and  bishops,  and  as  they  marched 
forward  the  inhabitants  of  Orvieto,  ten  thousand  in 
number,  joined  them.  The  day  after  their  entry 
into  Rome  most  of  the  inhabitants  put  on  the  white 
robe.  All  the  prisons  were  opened  and  the  prisoners 
set  free.  The  most  precious  relics  of  the  city  were 
exposed  in  special  services,  and  the  Pope  gave  the 
apostolic  benediction  to  an  immense  multitude  crying 
out,  "  Mercy!  Mercy!"  while  he  was  moved  to  tears. 
Two  contemporaries  wrote  that  all  Italy  prayed  and 
took  the  sacrament,  while  everywhere  injuries  were 
forgiven  and  deadly  feuds  healed.  But  these  effects 
passed  as  swiftly  as  they  had  come.  The  opening 
of  the  prisons,  the  enormous  crowd  of  strangers  in 
the  city,  the  intense  excitement,  brought  their  natural 
evils.  The  Pope  forbade  the  flagellation  processions. 
The  leader  of  a  new  train  of  pilgrims  was  arrested 
and  afterward  executed  for  frauds,  and  the  move- 


62  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

ment  dissipated  itself,  leaving  behind  a  bad  outbreak 
of  the  plague. 

The  Antipope,  Benedict  XIII.,  was  facing  a  dif- 
ferent sort  of  pilgrimage.  Marshal  Boucicault  led 
the  royal  army  against  the  castle  of  Avignon  in 
the  summer  of  1398.  But  the  huge  pile  that  still 
towers  on  its  rock  above  the  Rhone  was  not  easy  to 
take,  and  the  obstinate  Spaniard,  apparently  giving 
way  in  straits,  and  breaking  his  convention  as  soon 
as  he  was  reprovisioned,  maintained  his  position 
until  1403,  when,  in  disguise,  and  carrying  only  the 
consecrated  host,  "  the  prisoner  of  Avignon  "  escaped. 

But  meanwhile,  in  all  stillness,  the  new  intellectual 
force  whose  first  exponent  was  Petrarch  was  finding 
broader  expression.  Its  development  may  be  briefly 
indicated  in  the  slow  increase  of  the  numbers  and 
influence  of  the  Humanists,  or  followers  of  the  New 
Learning.  Among  the  thousands  of  these  men  who 
for  several  generations  loved  letters  or  sought  the 
glory  of  them  there  was  every  variation  in  character, 
but  marked  common  traits  betray  a  secret  law  by 
which  they  must  have  drawn  their  being  from  the 
spirit  of  the  age.  They  can  be  arranged,  without 
too  much  forcing,  around  groups  of  three  in  succes- 
sive generations. 

Boccaccio  was  a  contemporary  of  Petrarch's,  for 
he  was  only  nine  years  younger  and  died  only  one 
year  later ;  but  he  took  toward  his  friend  so  entirely 
the  attitude  of  a  disciple  that  he  is  always  looked 
upon  as  a  follower  and  successor.  He  had  neither 
the  greatness  nor  the  meanness  of  his  master.  He 
did  not,  because  he  could  not,  do  as  much,  but  he 


Boccaccio  the  Man.  63 

did  nothing  for  effect.  He  longed  for  fame,  but 
he  scorned  riches,  not  in  words  alone,  but  with 
the  pride  which  several  times  refused  to  change 
the  independence  of  a  scholar  and  a  citizen  of  free 
Florence  to  become  the  favorite  of  a  court.  Once 
only  he  tried  to  sit  at  the  table  of  Maecenas.  When 
the  rich  Florentine,  Niccola  Acciaijuoli,  became 
Grand  Seneschal  of  Naples,  Boccaccio  accepted  a 
pressing  invitation  "  to  share  his  luck  "  and  become 
his  biographer.  But  when  he  was  given  in  the 
splendid  palace  of  his  patron  a  room  and  service  far 
below  that  of  his  own  simple  house,  the  proud  poet 
resented  the  insult  by  leaving  at  once,  and  answered 
a  sarcastic  letter  from  the  Seneschal's  steward  by 
the  only  invective  which,  in  an  age  of  quarrels,  ever 
came  from  his  pen.  The  plump  little  man,  with  his 
merry  round  face,  and  twinkling  eyes  never  dimmed 
by  envy,  and  a  clear  wit  untinged  with  malice,  lived 
all  his  life  Imong4  the  bitterest  party  and  personal 
strifes,  he  became  a  distinguished  citizen,  and  con- 
ducted with  success  three  important  embassies,  but 
he  died  without  an  enemy.  His  enthusiasms  were 
deep  and  self-forgetful.  When  he  spoke  of  Dante, 
whose  poem,  by  a  vote  of  the  City  Council,  he  ex- 
pounded in  the  cathedral  every  Sunday  and  holy  day, 
his  eyes  moistened  and  his  voice  trembled  with  won- 
der and  love.  He  writes  to  Petrarch  with  a  humble 
and  touching  joy  in  his  friendship  to  one  so  un- 
worthy, which  asks  for  no  return.  Petrarch  used 
this  feeling,  which  he  accepted  as  if  it  were  a  homage 
due  to  him,  as  incense  to  burn  on  the  altar  of  his 
insatiable  egotism ;  but,  after  all,  he  loved  the  faith- 


64  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

ful  Florentine,  and  left  him  by  will  fifty  gold  florins 
to  buy  a  fur-lined  coat  to  wear  cold  nights  when  he 
read  late. 

Boccaccio  is  known  to  the  untechnical  reader 
only  as  the  author  of  the  Decameron.  The  book 
is  the  beginning  and  still  a  model  of  Tuscan  prose, 
and  ranks  him  forever  among  the  rarest  masters 
of  the  art  men  love  best — the  art  of  story-telling. 
He  took  his  material  wherever  he  could,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  to  offer  some  of  the  ten- 
der and  pure  stories  of  the  collection  to  those  who 
were  willing  to  enjoy  some  of  the  others  was  not 
casting  pearls  before  swine.  But  we  must  remember 
that  it  was  written  for  a  princess  by  a  man  of  the 
world,  who  gives  no  sign  that  he  is  offending  against 
good  manners.  For  there  existed  in  that  and  for 
succeeding  generations  an  incredible  freedom  of 
speech.  Whether  this  of  itself  indicates  a  larger 
license  in  living  than  that  which  prevails  among  the 
idle  and  luxurious  of  this  age,  in  which  vice  is  spoken 
of  chiefly  by  dotible  entendre,  is  hard  to  decide — at 
least  for  those  who  know  the  vast  distinction  between 
essential  morality  and  soc  al  custom.  But  whatever 
may  be  the  truth  of  this  comparison,  it  is  certain  that 
Boccaccio  had  lived  openly,  after  the  fashion  of  the 
age,  the  life  of  a  libertine,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see 
how  any  moral  defense  of  the  Decameron  as  a 
whole  can  be  accepted  by  a  serious-minded  per- 
son. The  only  consolation  under  the  brand-mark 
of  a  Philistine  which  is  certain  to  follow  the  confes- 
sion of  such  a  judgment  is  that  Boccaccio  himself 
thought  so ;  for  he  begged  an  old  friend  not  to  give 


Boccaccio  the  Scholar.  65 

the  book  to  his  wife,  who  would  certainly  judge  him 
unfairly  by  it;  or,  if  he  insisted  on  doing  it,  at  least 
to  explain  that  he  wrote  that  sort  of  thing  only  in  his 
youth.  In  his  vulgarity,  and  also  to  some  extent  in 
his  repentance,  he  is  a  representative  of  the  Hu- 
manists. In  every  generation,  from  Petrarch  down, 
many  of  their  leaders  were  willing  to  use  the  utmost 
skill  of  their  pens  in  promoting  the  worship  of  the 
goddess  of  lubricity  amid  the  laughter  and  applause 
of  Italy. 

Nothing  could  have  astonished  Boccaccio  more 
than  to  know  that  fame  would  come  to  him  as  the 
writer  of  the  Decameron,  and  not  through  his 
great  service  to  scholarship.  Not,  indeed,  that 
his  work  marks  any  real  advance  in  scholarship. 
Although  he  offered  hints  valuable  to  the  future,  like 
the  idea  of  correcting  texts  by  collating  manuscripts, 
he  lacked  strength  to  cut  out  the  paths  to  which  he 
pointed.  He  never  shook  himself  free  from  reverence 
for  tradition  and  awe  before  all  that  was  written. 
When,  for  instance,  he  finds  in  Vincentius  Bellova- 
censis  that  the  Franks  were  descended  from  Franko, 
a  son  of  Hector,  he  does  not  believe  it,  but  he  is  un- 
willing to  denounce  it  as  a  fable,  because  "  nothing 
is  impossible  with  God."  His  service  was  to  give 
the  inspiration  of  an  example  and  to  spread  by  the 
contagious  influence  of  personality  the  enthusiasm 
for  letters.  Petrarch,  when  he  left  his  dying  gift, 
knew  the  real  Boccaccio,  the  man  who  showed  Italy 
the  image  of  the  student  happy  in  the  companionship 
of  his  books,  a  living  picture  of  scholarship  powerful 
to  hold  and  fire  the  imagination,  like  Diirer's  beauti- 

£ 


66  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

ful  little  etching  of  St.  Jerome  in  his  cell.  When  the 
first  teacher  of  Greek  came  to  Italy  Boccaccio  has- 
tened to  meet  him  at  Venice,  took  him  to  Florence, 
and  kept  the  dirty  old  cynic  in  his  house,  learning 
from  him  the  Greek  letters  and  the  elements  of 
grammar.  He  never  seemed  to  get  farther,  and 
knew  Homer  only  in  the  stiff  translation  of  the 
master  which  he  copied  with  his  own  hand,  buried 
under  the  extraordinary  comments  of  the  old  man 
as  he  read  it. 

Enthusiasm  like  this  could  not  fail  of  a  strong 
impression  among  the  Florentines,  and  soon  after 
his  death  we  find  his  friends  organized  into  a 
learned  club  for  stated  discussion.  The  place  of 
meeting  was  in  the  convent  of  the  Augustins,  San 
Spirito,  to  which  Boccaccio  had  left  all  his  books  and 
in  whose  church  he  wished  to  be  buried.  The  soul 
and  leader  of  the  association  was  Luigi  de'  Marsigli, 
an  Augustinian  monk,  son  of  a  noble  Florentine 
family.  At  first  a  student  of  the  University  of  Pavia, 
he  took  his  master's  degree  in  theology  at  Paris. 
But  the  meetings  under  his  guidance  used  no  scho- 
lastic methods  of  discussion.  It  was  more  a  free  con- 
versation between  the  finest  spirits  of  Florence  on 
Livy  and  Ovid,  Augustine,  or  some  question  of 
archaeology  as  to  the  origin  of  Florence,  or  a  histori- 
cal personage  like  Ezzelin  or  Frederick  II.  We  do 
not  know  much  about  this  club,  except  that  in  it  for 
the  first  time  men  could  get  the  elements  of  educa- 
tion and  the  tone  of  scholarship  outside  of  the  Church 
and  the  university,  still  in  bondage  to  the  ghost  of  a 
mediasval  Aristotle  and  a  mediaeval  theology. 


Coluccio  Salutato.  67 

The  most  striking  of  these  younger  men  who  formed 
the  centre  of  learning  in  Florence  for  their  generation 
was  Coluccio  Salutato.  Trained  in  the  University  of 
Bologna  as  a  notary,  he  spent  two  years  as  an  under- 
secretary of  the  Curia,  and  carried  from  the  service 
a  lasting  hatred  for  the  corruptions  of  the  Papal 
court.  Afterward  he  led  for  several  years  the  wan- 
dering life  of  a  knight-errant  of  the  pen  seeking  for 
fortune,  and  finally  settled  in  Florence  as  a  clerk  in 
the  service  of  the  government.  At  the  age  of  forty- 
five  he  rose  to  be  Chancellor  of  State,  having  charge 
of  the  records  and  correspondence  of  the  Republic. 
And  during  all  his  life  there  streamed  out  from  the 
government  house  of  Florence  upon  the  eyes  of  a 
weak  and  restless  generation  the  light  of  a  stead- 
fast soul  that  loved  liberty  and  feared  only  God.  It 
was  his  ideal  for  Florence  that  she  should  be  a  city 
not  only  "  hating  and  cursing  tyranny  within  her  own 
walls,  but  always  ready  to  defend  with  all  her  strength 
the  privileges  of  the  other  cities  of  Italy."  He  put 
this  eloquence  of  sincere  and  bold  conviction  into  the 
letters  and  proclamations  of  the  Republic,  clothed  in 
swinging  rhetoric  and  ornamented  by  the  phrases  of 
Seneca  and  Petrarch.  They  were  copied  and  circu- 
lated even  beyond  the  Alps,  while  men  wondered  to 
find  life  and  beauty  in  State  documents.  Gian  Gale- 
azzo  Visconti,  the  most  dangerous  enemy  of  the 
Republic,  who  hid  like  a  spider  in  the  palace  at  Milan, 
strove  to  draw  all  the  cities  of  Italy  into  the  meshes 
of  his  crafty  tyranny,  said,  "  One  letter  of  Salutato's 
can  do  me  more  harm  than  a  thousand  Florentine 
men-at-arms." 


68  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Salutato  died  in  the  harness  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
six,  honored  by  all  his  neighbors ;  for  he  had  brought 
up  ten  sons  to  be  honest  and  honorable,  and,  except 
forty-five  florins  and  his  collection  of  manuscripts, 
this  man,  who  had  for  thirty  years  dealt  with  the  rich 
tyrants  of  Italy  and  known  all  the  secrets  of  the  State, 
left  neither  house  nor  property  outside  his  paternal 
inheritance.  He  has  one  lasting  claim  to  the  endur- 
ing gratitude  of  posterity :  he  was  the  first  man  to 
make  an  index  to  a  book.  Over  his  head  as  it  lay  on 
the  bier,  wreathed  by  public  order  with  the  laurel  of 
the  scholar  and  poet,  the  banners  of  the  city  and  all 
its  guilds  were  dipped,  and  a  marble  monument  told 
to  coming  generations  the  gratitude  of  the  Repub- 
lic to  the  honest  chancellor  who  had  brought  the 
power  of  the  New  Learning  into  the  service  of  the 
State.  He  had  to  defend  his  love  of  letters  against 
ascetics,  to  whom  all  beauty  was  a  snare,  he  was 
accused  of  being  a  heathen  philosopher  by  those  who 
could  not  reconcile  piety  with  the  continual  quotations 
of  Seneca  and  Cicero,  but  his  letters  show  the  spirit 
of  one  who  loved  religion.  And  therefore  some  of 
the  strongest  of  them  denounce  the  party  strife  and 
personal  ambition  which  was  degrading  the  ideal  of 
the  Papacy,  devastating  Italy  with  wild  mercenaries, 
and  threatening  to  destroy  the  liberties  of  Florence 
and  her  allies. 


PERIOD   I. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

ORTHODOX  DEMANDS  FOR  UNION  AND  REFORM: 
(l)  CATHERINE  OF  SIENA  «\ND  THE  ASCETIC 
PROPHETS  OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS;  (2)  THE 
PARTY  OF  CONCILIAR  SUPREMACY. 

|HE  corruption  of  the  Curia,  now  so  ap- 
parent in  the  schism  it  caused, — this  war 
between  two  factions  of  the  Princes  of  the 
Church  fiercely  contending  for  wealth  and 
power,  while  the  hungry  sheep  looked 
up  and  were  not  fed, — aroused  not  only  the  root  and 
branch  dissent  of  Wiclif,  but  also  created  two  distinct 
classes  of  protesters  loyal  to  the  Church  and  of  an 
orthodoxy  never  seriously  questioned. 

The  prototype  of  the  first  class  is  Catherine  of 
Siena,  canonized  soon  after  her  death.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  a  dyer,  and  from  her  earliest  youth  began 
to  scorn  delights  and  live  days  of  prayer  and  praise, 
visiting  the  prisoners,  clothing  the  poor,  and  tending 
the  sick.  Visions  and  dreams  came  to  her.  She  had 
seizures  in  which  she  lay  without  speech  or  feeling, 
to  awake  and  tell  of  conversations  with  Mary  and  the 
angels,  whether  in  the  body  or  out  of  it  she  knew 
not.  At  an  early  age  she  gained  the  privilege  of 

69 


70  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

wearing  the  robe  of  the  order  of  St.  Dominic  as  an 
associate  sister  without  a  vow.  She  became  an 
ambassador  of  the  Florentine  Republic  and  a  corre- 
spondent of  princes.  When  Gregory,  largely  at  her 
intercession,  came  back  from  Avignon  and  at  once 
began  to  answer  the  revolt  of  his  misgoverned  cities 
by  war,  she  poured  out  a  flood  of  letters  throbbing 
with  righteous  wrath  and  grief.  "  Peace,  peace, 
peace,  my  sweet  father,"  she  wrote;  "  no  more  war; 
war  against  the  enemies  of  the  cross  by  the  sword  of 
the  holy  Word  of  God,  full  of  love."  In  two  things 
she  never  wavered :  her  loyalty  to  the  Pope  as  the 
visible  Vicar  of  Christ,  and  her  readiness  to  rebuke 
the  sins  and  follies  of  Papal  policy ;  as  when  she  told 
Gregory  to  his  face  that  she  found  in  Rome  "  the 
stench  of  intolerable  sins."  The  holiness  of  her 
life  and  the  earnest  piety  of  her  intent,  symbolized 
in  that  extreme  asceticism  which,  comparatively 
uninfluential  upon  the  mind  and  heart  of  Teutonic 
peoples,  has  always  appealed  forcibly  to  the  more 
intense  and  artistic  temperament  of  the  South,  gave 
her  enormous  power.  All  Italy  held  her  for  a 
prophet ;  and  a  vigorous  intellect  and  a  strong  com- 
mon sense  woven  through  all  the  mystic  web  of  her 
visions  enabled  her  to  use  her  influence  well.  She 
died  a  few  years  before  Urban,  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
three  (1380),  worn  out  by  privations,  labors,  and  the 
griefs  and  ecstasies  of  a  fervent  spirit,  exclaiming 
with  her  last  breath,  "  I  come  not  because  of  my 
merits,  but  through  thy  mercy — only  through  the 
power  of  thy  blood."  And  Italy  did  not  lack  in 
any  generation  faithful  witnesses  in  her  likeness— 


Conciliar  Supremacy.  71 

ascetic,  mystical,  given  to  visions,  mingling  patriot- 
ism with  religion,  denouncing  sin  with  a  fervid 
eloquence  that  swayed  the  people  like  leaves  in 
the  wind,  or  reasoning  of  righteousness,  temper- 
ance, and  judgment  to  come  with  a  courage  before 
which  the  most  reckless  tyrant  or  the  greediest 
ecclesiastical  politician  secretly  quailed.  Lack  of 
space  compels  the  omission  of  the  portraits  of  these 
prophets  fallen  on  evil  days  until  we  come  to  Savo- 
narola, the  most  splendid  of  their  line. 

From  the  earliest  days  of  the  schism  voices  had 
been  heard  calling  for  a  General  Council  of  the 
Church  to  heal  the  schism  and  check  the  corruption 
and  demoralization  which  had  followed  in  its  train. 
This  demand  created  an  unorganized  party,  and 
the  party  formulated  a  theory  of  the  church  reject- 
ing the  Papal  Supremacy,  and  maintaining  that  the 
source  of  ecclesiastical  and  dogmatic  authority  was  in 
a  General  Council.  They  were,  of  course,  at  liberty 
to  do  this  without  transgressing  the  bounds  of  ortho- 
doxy, for,  however  strenuously  the  Infallibility  and 
Supremacy  of  the  Pope  were  maintained  by  argument 
and  force,  they  were  not  dogmatically  defined  as  a 
portion  of  the  Catholic  faith  until  our  own  generation. 

The  party  of  Conciliar  Supremacy  can  best  be  seen 
in  the  centre  where  it  found  a  voice,  the  University 
of  Paris.  And  its  best  spirit  is  incarnate  in  two 
Rectors  of  that  famous  school,  which  had  been  the 
alma  mater  of  so  many  Popes  and  owed  its  income 
and  most  of  its  privileges  to  the  Curia.  Pierre  d'Ailly 
was  the  son  of  an  artisan,  born  in  1350.  When  he 
came  up  to  the  University  of  Paris  at  twenty-two  he 


72  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

was  a  pious  and  able  youth,  much  given  to  the  study 
of  the  Bible.  His  ability  was  soon  noted.  The 
students  elected  him  a  procurator,  and  the  authorities 
appointed  him  preacher  to  open  a  Synod  at  Amiens. 
He  chose  as  his  theme  the  corruptions  of  the  clergy, 
and  laid  on  the  lash  well.  But  the  zeal  of  the  youth 
for  reform  went  hand  in  hand  with  a  zeal  for  ortho- 
doxy, and  the  same  year  he  published  his  "  Letter  to 
the  New  Jews."  It  sternly  rebukes  those  who  dared 
to  question  the  finality  of  the  Vulgate,  the  translation 
of  a  holy  man  used  by  the  infallible  Church;  and 
concludes  that  if  we  question  this  translation  we 
might  question  any  other  and  the  Catholic  would  be 
set  afloat  on  a  devil's  sea  of  doubt. 

It  was  in  1380  that  he  came  up  for  his  doctor's 
degree,  and  his  thesis  discussed  the  Church.  He 
defended  the  whole  hierarchical  organization,  but 
claimed  that  the  power  of  the  Church  was  not  mate- 
rial, but  spiritual.  Christ  answered  before  Pilate  and 
bade  us  give  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's. 
The  foundation  of  the  Church  was  Christ,  and  Peter 
was  a  pillar  of  the  great  building,  which  consisted  of 
the  fellowship  of  believers  in  Christ.  These  conclu- 
sions he  based  on  the  Scriptures,  which  pointed  to 
Christ  as  the  only  foundation,  and  plainly  taught  in 
Galatians  ii.  that  Peter  had  erred.  The  new  law  of 
Christ  was  therefore  the  law  of  God's  kingdom. 
But  that  new  law  of  Christ  recorded  in  the  Holy 
Scriptures  was  not  to  be  understood  by  the  human 
intellect  and  accepted  by  the  human  will.  The  King- 
dom of  God  could  only  enter  into  a  man  by  the 
supernatural  gift  of  faith.  To  give  this  God  had 


An  Intolerable  Situation.  73 

founded  his  visible  Church,  and  without-  her  none 
could  hear  or  obey  the  law  of  Christ.  Outside  the 
Church,  therefore,  none  could  be  saved.  When  he 
came  to  define  how  the  Church  expressed  the  final 
authority  given  her  for  salvation  he  fell  into  embar- 
rassment. He  mentions  several  opinions:  that  the 
Universal  Church  cannot  err,  nor  a  General  Council, 
nor  the  Roman  Diocese,  nor  its  representative,  the 
College  of  Cardinals,  nor  a  canonically  elected  Pope. 
Of  these  he  expresses  approval  only  of  the  first.  In 
regard  to  the  second  he  seems  to  be  in  doubt,  and 
the  general  impression  of  his  thesis  is  that  the  infal- 
lible Church  has  no  infallible  organ  of  expression. 
But  he  rather  indicates  this  conclusion  as  the  abstract 
result  of  a  scholastic  discussion  than  as  a  distinct 
practical  judgment.  On  the  burning  question  of  the 
day,  how  to  get  rid  of  the  schism,  he  showed  himself 
a  man  of  compromise,  standing  half  way  between 
the  Papalists,  who  thought  the  Pope  independent  of 
the  Council,  and  the  Conciliarists,  who  thought  that 
a  General  Council  would  be  independent  of  the 
Pope. 

The  demoralization  of  the  schism  was  complete, 
and  the  condition  of  the  French  Church  was  now 
unbearable.  The  churches  were  empty,  the  hos- 
pitals closed,  parish  priests  begging  in  the  streets, 
while  the  hungry  cardinals  at  Avignon  consumed 
the  ecclesiastical  funds.  In  1381  an  assembly  of 
the  University  voted  unanimously  to  demand  a 
Council.  The  Regent  of  France  was  enraged,  and 
imprisoned  the  delegates  who  presented  the  request. 
The  University  protested,  and  appointed  the  young 


74  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Professor 'Pierre  d'Ailly  as  their  advocate  before  the 
Duke.  He  did  his  dangerous  duty  like  a  man  and 
came  off  safe,  but  the  plan  for  a  Council  was  stifled  at 
its  beginning.  Then  d'Ailly  took  to  the  pen  and  wrote 
a  Letter  from  Hell.  It  was  signed  by  Leviathan,  the 
Prince  of  Darkness,  ordering  his  vassals,  the  prelates, 
to  be  careful  for  the  maintenance  of  the  schism.  "  I 
had  worked  in  vain,"  he  writes,  "  to  injure  the  Church 
while  her  sons  loved  one  another,  when  suddenly  her 
prelates  brought  the  whole  heavenly  Jerusalem  into 
confusion  and  began  to  cry,  '  I  am  for  Clement,'  '  I 
for  Urban,' '  I  for  the  General  Council,'  '  I  for  a  union,' 
'  I  for  the  resignation  of  both,'  '  I  for  the  Lord,'  '  I 
for  the  King,' '  I  for  the  rich  benefices  I  have  got  from 
so-and-so.'  Oh,  what  joy  for  all  my  true  subjects  to 
see  the  city  thus  surrendered  to  me !  Therefore  have 
I  crowned  my  true  servants,  the  prelates  of  the 
Church,  with  glory  and  honor,  and  made  them  rulers 
of  all  the  work  of  my  hands,  giving  them  all  the 
kingdoms  of  this  world  and  the  glory  thereof.  But 
now,  behold,  a  miserable  remnant  like  mice  crawling 
out  of  their  holes  dare  to  challenge  my  prelates  to 
battle,  and  cry,  '  General  Council !  let  the  people  of 
Christ  come  together.'  If  they  do  not  recant,  kill 
them,  my  sons.  Let  no  one  take  your  crown.  No 
sympathy  must  soften  your  heart,  no  pity  cause  it 
to  tremble ;  be  hard  as  rock  and  let  the  whole  earth 
perish  rather  than  give  your  honor  to  another.  Stand 
by  your  advantage  till  the  last  breath.  I  count  on 
you,  for  I  know  your  obstinacy  and  stiff-neckedness. 
Blessed  be  your  wrath,  that  is  so  strong,  and  your 
hate,  that  is  so  fixed.  Make  broad  your  phylacteries, 


The  "  Eagle  of  France"  75 

and  the  borders  of  your  garments  great.  Love  the 
first  places  at  feasts  and  the  chief  seats  in  synagogues. 
Tithe  mint  and  anise  and  cummin,  but  neglect  the 
weightier  matters  of  the  law.  Make  proselytes  that 
are  worse  than  yourself.  Be  wise  in  your  own  con- 
ceits. Be  strong  and  steadfast,  for  I  am  your  shield 
and  great  reward.  Run,  that  ye  may  receive  the 
prize.  Amen." 

But  these  brave  words  were  scarcely  heard  in  the 
storm  of  ecclesiastical  politics.  The  University,  de- 
spairing of  a  Council,  gave  in  its  obedience  to  Clement 
VII.,  and  in  1384  d'Ailly  became  Rector  of  one  of 
its  best  colleges.  There  he  soon  gathered  round 
him  a  band  of  distinguished  scholars  who  all  loved 
him  and  became  Gilles  Deschamps,  the  "  Sovereign 
Doctor  of  Theology,"  Jean  of  Gerson,  "  the  Most 
Christian  Teacher,"  and  Nicolas  of  Clemanges,  the 
"  Cicero  of  his  Age."  D'Ailly 's  reputation  as  a  wise 
and  forceful  speaker  grew,  and  in  1387  he  was  chosen 
as  head  of  a  deputation  to  defend  before  thqpPope  the 
action  of  the  University  in  condemning  as  heretical 
the  theses  of  a  Dominican  applicant  for  a  degree 
who  had  attacked  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the 
Virgin  Mary.  His  mission  was  difficult,  for  Thomas 
Aquinas  had  denied  the  Immaculate  Conception  and 
Urban  V.  had  approved  Thomas  as  the  teacher  of 
the  Church.  But,  nevertheless,  Clement  condemned 
the  denial  of  Immaculate  Conception  as  heretical, 
and  the  Dominican  transferred  his  obedience  to  the 
other  Pope.  There  was  wide  rejoicing  at  this 
triumph.  D'Ailly  received  the  name  of  the  "  Eagle 
of  France,"  and  at  almost  the  same  time  the  young 


The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 


King  chose  him  as  confessor,  and  the  University 
elected  him  Rector. 

He  soon  had  a  second  mission  to  Clement.  A 
certain  Prince  Peter  of  Luxembourg,  having  been 
made  Bishop  of  Metz  at  fourteen,  and  Cardinal  at 
sixteen,  died  two  years  later,  in  1387,  and  d'Ailly 
was  sent  to  advocate  his  canonization.  He  preached 
twice  to  the  Pope,  once  from  the  text,  "  Father,  the 
hour  is  come  ;  glorify  thy  Son,  that  thy  Son  also  may 
glorify  thee."  The  preacher  proved  Peter's  holiness 
by  a  catalogue  of  2  128  miracles  ;  e.  g.,  dead  raised,  73  ; 
blind  healed,  57;  cured  of  gout,  6,  etc;  his  faith 
was  illustrated  by  the  zeal  with  which  he  flung  into 
the  fire  a  Dominican  writing  attacking  the  Immacu- 
late Conception  ;  and  it  was  suggested  as  the  perora- 
tion that  God  had  given  these  wonderful  powers  to 
show  that  Clement  was  the  rightful  Pope  and  thus 
heal  the  schism. 

In  1394  the  University  asked  the  written  opinion 
of  all  it^members  on  the  schism.  The  result  was  — 
negotiations.  And  d'Ailly,  being  sent  to  the  new 
Pope,  was  made  to  believe  he  would  resign  in  due 
time  and  appointed  Bishop  of  Cambrai. 

He  was  succeeded  in  the  rectorship  of  the  Univer- 
sity by  his  favorite  scholar,  John,  born  at  Gerson  in 
1363.  He  had  gained  under  his  master  a  tendency 
to  mysticism,  a  good  training  in  theology,  a  love  of 
the  Scriptures,  and  a  thorough  devotion  to  the  Church, 
Catholic  and  visible.  He  added  to  these  a  deep 
piety  and  an  intense  love  of  the  young.  The  five 
folio  volumes  of  his  works,  moral,  mystic,  exegetic, 
dogmatic,  ecclesiastical,  polemic  and  homiletic,  show 


Jean  Char  Her  of  Gerson. 


how  laboriously  he  used  his  powers  and  how  faith- 
fully he  followed  the  bent  of  his  genius.  There  is  a 
practical  turn  to  all  his  mystical  and  keenly  critical 
mind  thinks  and  feels.  This  Chancellor  of  the  Uni- 
versity used  to  devote  much  time  to  hearing  the  con- 
fessions of  little  boys.  This  learned  theologian 
thought  that  all  learning  was  only  to  teach  the  clergy 
to  preach  better.  This  skilful  writer  on  ecclesiastical 
law  was  a  stern  preacher  against  the  sins  of  the 
clergy,  and  his  criticism  and  piety  moved  entirely 
within  the  self-chosen  limits  of  the  Catholic  orthodox 
faith,  which  was  to  him  a  supernatural  gift  of  God, 
through  the  Church,  to  every  man  who  was  obedient 
to  God's  servants.  The  system  of  faith  the  Church 
preserved,  the  system  of  government  by  which  she 
preserved  it,  was  more  important  to  him  than  any 
opinion  or  any  reform.  Hence,  like  d'Ailly,  in  spite 
of  the  sceptical  spirit  he  inherited  with  his  nominal- 
istic  philosophy,  he  was  always  a  safe  theologian. 
And  he  shared  not  only  his  master's  reforming  zeal, 
but  also  his  love  for  a  "  middle-of-the-road  "  policy. 
"  It  is  better,"  he  wrote,  "  that  many  truths  should 
be  unknown  or  concealed  than  that  charity  should  be 
wounded  by  speaking  of  them."  He  anxiously 
warned  every  theological  teacher  to  use  the  old  forms, 
even  if,  in  his  judgment,  he  could  find  better.  He 
even  wished  that,  as  the  Church  had  one  Head  and 
one  faith,  so  it  might  have  only  one  theological  fac- 
ulty and  be  kept  "safe."  Naturally  this  was  to  be 
the  faculty  of  Paris.  He  loved  the  Bible,  but  he  op- 
posed its  translation  into  French,  as  full  of  danger  of 
spreading  heresy  among  unlearned  folk,  "  as  an 


78  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

injury  and  a  stumbling-block  for  the  Catholic  faith." 
All  these  early  utterances  are  prophecies  of  his  trac- 
tate written  over  Jerome  of  Prague,  that,  when  it 
comes  to  "  obstinacy  in  heresy  against  the  command 
of  the  Church,  the  conscience  must  be  laid  aside." 

While  this  able  successor  followed  him  as  Rector 
and  first  orator  of  the  University,  d'Ailly  was  inau- 
gurating reforms  in  his  new  diocese.  He  found 
need,  for  in  his  first  synodical  sermon  he  said  that, 
while  ir^  our  Lord's  day  there  was  one  devil  among 
the  twelve  apostles,  to-day  among  twelve  baptized 
there  were  eleven.  It  was  from  this  herculean  task 
of  cleansing,  which  he  sketches  in  his  convocation 
sermons,  that  he  was  summoned  to  try  and  persuade 
both  Popes  to  resign.  The  double  embassy  was  a 
double  failure,  and  France  withdrew  obedience  from 
both.  But  only  for  a  while.  Five  years  later 
d'Ailly  was  summoned  to  preach  the  sermon  at  the 
celebration  of  the  return  of  France  to  the  obedience 
of  Benedict — an  obedience  which  in  five  years  was 
again  withdrawn. 


PERIOD   I. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  COUNCIL  OF  PISA  MAKES  THE  SCHISM 
TRIPLE — THE  PROTEST  OF  JOHN  HUSS  OF 
BOHEMIA. 

|HEN,  on  the  death  of  Innocent  VII.  in 
1406,  the  fourteen  cardinals  of  the  Italian 
party  met,  they  were  evidently  sincerely 
touched  by  the  desperate  condition  of 
Christendom.  The  simple  and  honest 
way  to  express  this  feeling  was  to  refuse  to  elect  a 
Pope  until  it  could  be  done  by  the  representatives  of 
the  whole  Church.  For  this  they  were  not  large 
enough.  They  feared  lest  their  party  should  lose 
some  advantage  in  the  union,  and  after  a  short  hesi- 
tation entered  into  conclave.  But  they  bound  them- 
selves by  a  solemn  agreement  that  if  any  of  them 
were  elected  Pope  he  would  at  once  begin  to  nego- 
tiate for  union,  and  lay  down  the  tiara  whenever 
the  interests  of  the  Church  demanded  it.  Then 
they  chose  the  noble  Venetian,  Angelo  Coraro.  He 
was  nearly  eighty  years  old,  and  they  thought  that 
one  so  near  death  would  not  be  tempted  to  forget 
duty  for  self — a  singular  want  of  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  for  all  experience  teaches  that  egotism  is 

79 


8o  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

never  so  all-engrossing  as  in  the  few  last  years  left 
to  an  ambitious  or  avaricious  man  for  the  exercise  of 
passion.  And  the  world  soon  became  aware  that 
behind  all  the  edifying  and  friendly  messages  sent  to 
his  rival  there  was  the  fixed  will  of  a  crafty  old  man 
neither  to  promote  nor  permit  a  union  which  did  not 
secure  the  gains  of  his  party  and  leave  him  Pope. 
When  the  pressure  of  France  compelled  both  Popes 
to  agree  to  meet  at  Savona  in  September  of  1408, 
there  began  a  double-sided  comedy.  Each  ap- 
proached the  place  of  meeting,  but  neither  would  go 
there,  and  by  letters  curiously  mingled  of  piety  and 
malice  each  tried  to  lay  the  whole  blame  for  the 
schism  at  the  door  of  the  other. 

Then  the  French  authorities  forbade  any  one  to 
obey  either  Pope  unless  the  schism  were  ended  by  a 
certain  day.  The  enraged  Benedict  XIII.,  of  the  old 
French  faction,  threatened  excommunication,  and  the 
Parliament  of  France  and  University  of  Paris  declared 
him  deposed.  Gregory,  triumphing  over  the  loss  of 
his  rival's  strongest  supporter,  seized  the  opportunity 
for  breaking  his  oath  to  create  no  new  cardinals,  by 
naming  two  of  his  nephews  and  two  of  his  partisans 
for  the  scarlet  hat.  He  already  suspected  his  electors 
and  kept  them  surrounded  by  soldiers.  Remember- 
ing the  fate  of  the  cardinals  of  Urban  VI.,  most  of 
them  fled  and  appealed  to  a  Council.  Benedict 
had  already  summoned  one  to  his  native  place 
of  Perpignan,  whither  he  fled  for  refuge.  Greg- 
ory called  another  to  assemble  near  Ravenna. 
Meantime  some  cardinals  of  both  parties,  Frenchmen 
and  Italians,  met  and  called  a  Council,  to  be  held  at 


The  Triple  Schism.  81 

Pisa,  to  arrange  a  basis  of  union  and  reform;  and 
Christendom,  which  had  so  long  asked  fora  Council, 
found  itself  overwhelmed  with  three. 

It  was  a  brilliant  assembly  that  convened  at  Pisa  in 
1409  :  twenty-three  cardinals,  the  prelates  and  ambas- 
sadors of  kings,  princes,  and  nations,  the  representa- 
tives of  the  universities,  and  one  hundred  doctors  of  law 
and  theology.  But  in  spite  of  its  splendor  and  author- 
ity the  council^knew  that  its  assemblage  against  Papal 
authority  was  an  innovation,  and  hailed  with  gladness 
the  tractates  of  d'Ailly  and  Gerson,  claiming  that  as 
Christ  was  the  corner-stone  of  the  Church,  she  had 
power  to  exercise  her  authority  without  any  visible 
Vicar  if  it  were  necessary  to  preserve  her  life.  They 
added  the  characteristic  and  wise  advice  not  to  run 
the  risk  of  adding  schism  to  schism  by  electing  a 
Pope  until  they  were  sure  that  Christendom  would 
unanimously  obey  him. 

The  Council  proceeded  to  depose  and  excommuni- 
cate both  Gregory  and  Benedict  as  schismatics  and 
heretics.  The  Cardinals  then  took  oath  that  whoever 
was  made  Vicar  of  Christ  would  not  dissolve  the 
Council  until  the  Church  was  reformed.  And  the 
Conclave  elected  Pietro  Filargo.  He  was  seventy- 
nine  years  old,  came  from  the  island  of  Candia,  had 
no  living  relatives,  and,  report  said,  had  been  a  beg- 
gar boy  adopted  by  the  monks  to  whose  order  he 
belonged.  He  was  crowned  under  the  name  of 
Alexander  V. ;  and,  to  use  the  words  of  a  contem- 
porary pamphleteer,  the  world  saw  "  that  infamous 
duality,  now,  indeed,  become  a  trinity,  not  blessed, 
but  accursed,  righting  in  the  Church  of  God." 


82  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

For  the  two  Antipopes,  each  backed  by  his  Synod, 
returned  with  interest  the  excommunications  of  the 
Council.  Benedict  was  supported  by  Aragon  and 
Scotland,  Gregory  in  Naples,  Friauli,  Hungary,  and 
Bohemia.  Alexander  could  not  conciliate  them,  and 
he  had  no  resources  to  crush  them.  For,  as  he  said, 
"  I  was  rich  as  a  bishop,  poor  as  a  cardinal,  but  a 
beggar  as  Pope." 

Baldassar  Cossa,  Cardinal  Legate  of  Bologna,  who 
succeeded  him  under  the  title  of  John  XXIII.,  was 
popularly  reported  to  have  been  a  pirate  in  his  youth 
and  to  have  poisoned  Alexander.  But  these  ought 
probably  to  be  regarded  as  mythical  details  suggested 
by  better  authenticated  facts  of  his  career  and  char- 
acter. For  these  the  day  of  judgment  was  approach- 
ing. Driven  by  the  exigencies  of  the  triple  contest  to 
seek  help  from  Sigismund,  ruler  of  Germany,  the  Pope 
had  no  resource  but  to  join  him  as  emperor  elect  in 
calling  a  General  Council  at  Constance  in  November, 
1414.  And  at  last  the  middle-of-the-road  policy  of 
d'Ailly  and  his  scholar  Gerson  triumphed  in  the  call 
for  a  General  Council  issued  by  a  Pope. 

Meanwhile  in  the  opposite  corner  of  Europe  another 
party  of  reform  had  been  taking  shape.  It  also  was 
national,  headed  by  a  university,  and  represented  by 
two  protagonists,  a  master  and  his  scholar.  But 
nation  and  university  were  new  and  feeble,  and  both 
were  divided  on  the  question  of  reform  into  bitter 
factions. 

Bohemia  was  a  section  of  the  empire  which,  by 
the  force  of  the  tendencies  of  the  age,  was  fast  ac- 
quiring an  independent  national  feeling  and  existence. 


A  New  Nation.  83 

It  was  a  bilingual  land,  whose  original  German  popu- 
lation, driven  out  in  the  eighth  century  by  an  irrup- 
tion of  Slavs,  had  since  the  thirteenth  century  been 
returning  and  mingling  with  them.  Germans  formed 
the  bulk  of  the  burghers,  or  city  dwellers,  engaged  in 
commerce,  manufactures,  and  mining,  while  the  peas- 
ant farmers  and  the  nobles  were  Slavs.  In  the  middle 
of  the  century  the  growing  national  feeling  had  re- 
ceived, by  the  efforts  of  the  King,  two  centres  of  ex- 
pression. The  Bohemian  Church  was  freed  from  the 
control  of  the  Archbishopric  of  Mayence,  whose  seat 
was  on  the  Rhine,  and  given  its  own  Primate  by  the 
erection  of  a  new  Archbishopric  in  Prague;  and  in 
1348  Bohemia  became  a  centre  of  learning  by  the 
foundation  of  the  University  of  Prague;  the  first 
university  in  Germany. 

John  Huss,  born  of  a  peasant  family  about  1369, 
first  appears  in  close  connection  with  these  two 
organs  of  the  national  feeling.  He  gained  no  special 
distinction  at  the  University  while  a  student,  but  rose 
steadily  through  the  academic  grades  till  he  became 
a  master  of  the  liberal  arts.  As  a  lecturer  and  teacher 
he  won  the  respect  of  his  fellows,  and  in  1402  was 
chosen  to  act  as  Rector  or  chief  executive  of  the  Uni- 
versity for  the  usual  term  of  six  months.  In  the  same 
year  he  was  ordained  a  priest  in  order  to  take  charge 
of  the  Bethlehem  Chapel,  built  some  ten  years  before 
by  a  wealthy  merchant  of  Prague,  and  endowed  by 
one  of  the  royal  councillors,  for  the  maintenance 
of  preaching  to  the  common  people  in  the  Slavic 
tongue.  He  soon  showed  himself  a  not  unworthy 
successor  of  the  two  great  folks'  preachers  of  Prague, 


84  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

dead  about  a  generation  before,  Konrad  and  Miltitz. 
Konrad,  because  there  was  no  church  large  enough 
to  hold  his  congregation,  had  preached  often  in  the 
great  open  square  of  the  city.  He  became,  by  the 
appointment  of  the  Bishop,  pastor  of  the  largest  parish 
in  Prague,  and  preached  repentance  to  the  German 
burghers  and  to  the  clergy,  denouncing  sin  with 
tremendous  power.  His  successor  was  Miltitz,  a 
Slav,  whose  success  was  so  great  that  he  was  some- 
times compelled  to  preach  five  times  a  Sunday — 
thrice  in  Slavic  and  once  each  in  German  and  Latin. 
He  was  so  powerful  in  the  truth  that  the  worst  street 
of  the  city,  known  because  of  its  houses  of  prostitution 
as  Little  Venice,  was  abandoned  by  its  inhabitants. 
The  King  bought  and  gave  it  to  him,  and  he  tore 
down  the  houses  and  built  a  Magdalen  asylum  named 
Little  Jerusalem.  He  did  not  hesitate  in  a  great 
assembly  to  point  out  the  King,  his  friend,  and  after- 
ward still  more  his  friend,  as  an  antichrist  who  needed 
instant  repentance.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
one  who  preached  in  this  apocalyptic  strain  got  into 
trouble  in  those  days  with  his  ecclesiastical  superiors. 
But  he  boldly  went  to  Rome  to  meet  his  accusers. 
After  vainly  waiting  for  a  hearing  he  posted  on  the 
door  of  St.  Peter's  the  notice  of  a  sermon  on  "The 
Present  Antichrist."  Arrested  by  the  inquisitor,  he 
lay  for  some  time  in  prison  ;  but  on  the  arrival  of  the 
Pope  was  released,  treated  with  honor,  and  sent  home 
in  triumph.  As  a  preacher  Huss  lacked  the  ability, 
but  not  the  courage,  of  these  two  men. 

He  formed  his  style  and  borrowed  much  of  his 
material  from  the  works  of  Wiclif.     He  had  already 


Huss  the  Preacher.  85 

sat  eagerly  at  the  feet  of  the  great  scholastic,  some 
of  whose  tractates  he  copied  with  his  own  hand. 
And  now,  following  in  the  footsteps  of  Wiclif  the 
preacher,  he  began  to  call  men  to  repentance  by  the 
law  of  Christ,  obedience  to  which  was  the  only  sign 
of  membership  in  the  true  church  of  God's  chosen  ones. 

Wiclif,  it  will  be  remembered,  passed  through  three 
stages  of  thought  in  regard  to  the  Church,  which 
would  be  labelled  by  the  enormous  majority  of  his 
contemporaries  reform,  revolution,  heresy.  Huss  fol- 
lowed him  in  two  of  these  stages.  And  while  he 
remained  in  the  first  stage,  exhorting  all  ranks  of  the 
church  to  do  their  duty  and  rightly  use  their  au- 
thority, he  came  into  close  connection  with  the  second 
centre  of  national  feeling,  the  new  Archbishopric.  The 
new  incumbent,  the  descendant  of  a  noble  Slavic 
family,  and  skilled  in  everything  except  theology, 
was  an  honest  man,  for  whose  moral  character  Huss 
kept  until  the  end  the  highest  respect.  He  at  once 
asked  the  new  preacher's  assistance  in  the  reform  of 
his  province,  applauded  Huss's  sermon  before  the 
Synod  on  the  sins  of  the  clergy,  which  did  not  spare  * 
even  himself,  and  appointed  him  one  of  the  commis- 
sion to  investigate  the  miracles  of  the  blood  of  Christ 
at  Wilsnach.  Accepting  the  report  upon  that  fraud, 
he  forbade  all  pilgrimages  from  his  province  to  the 
shrine  of  the  alleged  miracles. 

But  within  six  years,  either  because  the  Archbishop 
began  to  grow  more  conservative,  or  because  Huss 
was  becoming  more  radical  in  his  criticism  of  the 
Church,  a  coolness  arose  between  the  two,  which  grew 
until  the  Archbishop  removed  his  favorite  from  the 


86  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

position  of  synodical  preacher.  But  the  final  break 
with  the  hierarchy  came  when,  under  the  lead  of  Huss, 
the  Bohemian  teachers  and  students  of  the  University 
stood  against  the  Bishops,  and  with  the  King,  in  favor 
of  remaining  neutral  in  the  schism  of  the  Church  and 
awaiting  the  decision  of  a  Council.  The  three  other 
nations  of  the  University  voted,  with  the  clergy,  to 
obey  Alexander  V.,  and  the  King  issued  a  decree 
giving  hereafter  three  votes  to  the  Bohemian  nation, 
and  one  to  the  Polish,  Bavarian,  and  Saxon  nations 
together.  Whereupon  the  German  students  aban- 
doned Prague  and  founded  the  new  University  of 
Leipzig,  while  the  triumphant  Bohemians  elected 
Huss  as  rector.  Meanwhile  the  Archbishop  had  ob- 
tained two  bulls  from  Pope  Alexander  V.,  command- 
ing the  surrender  of  all  writings  of  Wiclif's  and 
forbidding  preaching  in  any  places  which  had  not 
acquired  the  right  by  long  usage.  When  these  orders 
were  published,  Huss,  before  a  large  assembly  in  the 
Bethlehem  Chapel,  entered  his  protest  against  both 
points,  and  appealed  to  the  Pope.  A  month  later  the 
Archbishop  excommunicated  Huss,  and  two  months 
later  two  hundred  volumes  of  Wiclif's  writings  were 
publicly  burned.  The  students  resented  the  first  by 
singing  mocking  songs  about  an  "  A  B  C  archbishop 
who  burned  books  and  didn't  know  what  was  in 
them."  And  the  people  resented  the  condemnation 
of  their  favorite  preacher  in  sterner  fashion.  A 
tumult  in  the  cathedral  broke  up  the  high  mass  and 
compelled  the  Archbishop  to  withdraw.  And  in  St. 
Stephen's  Church  six  men  with  drawn  swords  fell 
upon  the  priest  as  he  read  the  excommunication  of 


Huss  Denounces  Papal  War.  87 

Huss  and  drove  him  from  the  pulpit.  Then  the  Arch- 
bishop used  his  last  weapon,  the  dreaded  interdict 
that  forbade  baptism,  burial,  marriage,  and  the  Lord's 
Supper  in  the  rebellious  city  of  Prague.  But  Huss 
stood  by  his  post,  and  the  sudden  death  of  the  Arch- 
bishop, and  the  appointment  of  the  King's  physician 
and  trusted  friend  as  his  successor,  brought  peace. 
A  new  cause  for  war  soon  followed.  John  XXIII. 
proclaimed  a  crusade  against  Gregory  XII.,  and  an 
agent  of  the  Curia  appeared  in  Prague  to  cause  the 
proclamation  from  every  pulpit  of  a  sale  of  indulgences 
to  raise  funds,  and  an  enlistment  of  soldiers  for  a  holy 
war  in  the  name  of  the  Vicar  of  Christ.  Huss,  like 
Wiclif  before  him,  sprang  to  his  spiritual  arms.  His 
pulpit  rang  with  denunciations,  and  in  university 
disputation  he  and  his  friends,  notably  the  eloquent 
Jerome  of  Prague,  attacked  the  crusade  and  the  sale 
of  indulgences  against  the  majority  of  the  theological 
faculty.  The  excitement  spread.  A  mock  proces- 
sion, organized  by  a  well-known  nobleman,  drew 
through  the  streets  a  wagon  on  which  sat  a  woman 
of  the  town  with  the  Pope's  bull  around  her  neck. 
Halting  for  a  while  before  the  palace  of  the  Arch- 
bishop, the  huge  rude  train  went  to  the  market-place, 
where  the  bull  was  laid  on  a  scaffold  and  publicly 
burned.  The  King  did  not  punish  the  act,  but  for- 
bade all  disorder  in  future,  under  pain  of  death. 
Three  young  men  of  the  common  people,  in  spite  of 
this  edict,  interrupted  the  services  of  several  churches 
by  denouncing  the  indulgence  as  a  cheat  and  lie. 
They  were  arrested  by  the  magistrates  and  beheaded. 
The  people  gathered  the  bodies,  and  in  a  procession, 


88  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

headed  by  a  band  of  students  chanting  the  song  of 
the  breviary  for  the  commemoration  of  the  martyrs, 
"  Isti  sunt  sancti,"  bore  them  to  the  Bethlehem 
Chapel  for  a  solemn  funeral  service.  The  German 
City  Council  endeavored  to  suppress  Huss's  preach- 
ing by  force,  and  his  congregation  appeared  in  arms 
for  his  defence.  Then,  to  relieve  the  city  from  the 
interdict  and  avoid  the  chances  of  riot  in  the  streets, 
Huss,  at  the  request  of  his  King,  withdrew  to  volun- 
tary exile,  leaving  behind  an  open  letter  in  which  he 
appealed  from  the  Curia  to  Christ. 

Soon  after  he  was  visited  by  two  messengers  from 
Sigismund,  who  invited  him,  under  promise  of  a  safe- 
conduct,  to  appear  before  the  General  Council  at  Con- 
stance, where  he  might  have  an  opportunity  to  clear 
himself  of  the  charge  of  heresy  and  save  the  ecclesi- 
astical honor  of  Bohemia.  Nothing  could  have 
pleased  Huss  more.  He  had  himself  appealed  from 
the  Pope  to  a  Council,  and  his  one  desire  had  always 
been  to  persuade  the  Church  to  accept  his  ideas,  or 
at  least  permit  them.  Nevertheless,  forebodings  of 
evil  haunted  his  prophetic  soul.  His  letter  to  the 
Emperor  spoke  of  his  desire  to  confess  Christ,  and  if 
need  be  suffer  death  for  his  true  law.  He  wrote  his 
will  and  gave  it  to  a  favorite  scholar,  with  directions 
not  to  break  the  seal  until  he  heard  of  his  death. 
And  he  left  a  farewell  letter  to  his  friends  in  Bohemia, 
in  which  he  asked  for  their  prayers  that  he  might 
stand  firm,  and  if  need  be  suffer  death  without  fear. 
They  shared  his  anxiety.  A  shoemaker  of  the  city 
bade  him,  "  God-speed ;  I  think  you  will  not  come 
back,  dear,  true,  and  steadfast  knight.  May  the 


The  Appeal  to  the  Council.  89 

heavenly  King,  not  the  Hungarian,  give  you  the 
eternal  reward  for  the  faithful  care  you  have  given 
to  my  soul." 

Sigismund  appointed  three  Bohemian  nobles  as 
imperial  deputies  to  enforce  the  safe-conduct  which 
protected  him  against  illegal  violence,  and  Huss  set 
out  for  Constance. 


PERIOD   I. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  COUNCIL  OF  CONSTANCE  AND  TRIUMPH  OF 
THE  PARTY  OF  CONCILIAR  AUTHORITY:  (l) 
THEY  DEPOSE  THE  POPES  AND  FORCE  UNION  ; 
(2)  THEY  REPUDIATE  THE  BOHEMIAN  PRO- 
TEST AND  BURN  HUSSJ  (3)  THEY  FAIL  TO  DE- 
TERMINE THE  REFORM  OF  THE  CHURCH  IN 
HEAD  AND  MEMBERS. 

LMOST  the  first  to  arrive  at  the  fair  little 
city  by  the  lake  was  the  Pope,  who  had 
ridden  up  from  Italy  with  a  splendid  train 
of  nine  cardinals  and  many  prelates.  He 
entered  the  gates  in  state,  with  two  great 
nobles  walking  at  the  bridle-reins  of  his  palfrey,  while 
the  burgomaster  and  rulers  of  the  city  carried  the 
glittering  baldachin  over  his  head.  And  for  three 
months  the  boys  of  Constance  must  have  revelled  in 
the  almost  daily  spectacle  of  some  stately  entry.  The 
legates  of  Gregory  and  Benedict,  who  had  been 
courteously  invited  to  come  to  the  Council,  princes, 
ambassadors,  great  nobles,  archbishops  and  splendid 
prelates,  little  companies  of  University  doctors,  all 
with  as  many  horses  and  servants  in  their  train  as 

90 


The  Method  of  Voting.  9 1 

they  could  muster,  straggled  through  the  streets  in 
spasmodic  parade.  The  Emperor  came  by  torch- 
light on  Christmas  eve.  He  was  accompanied  by 
the  Empress  and  several  Princes  of  the  Empire,  and 
followed  by  a  thousand  horses  laden  with  articles  of 
luxury,  from  his  service  of  table  silver  down  to  many 
pack-loads  of  embroidered  pillows,  silk  bolsters,  and 
carpets.  Before  midnight,  clothed  in  the  dalmatic 
and  with  his  crown  on  his  head,  he  read  the  Gospel 
for  the  day  as  deacon,  while  the  Pope  conducted  mass 
in  the  cathedral. 

One  meeting  had  already  been  held,  but  noth- 
ing done,  except  formally  open  the  Council,  arrange 
for  proper  secretaries,  and  discuss  the  order  of  busi- 
ness. The  first  important  question  was  the  man- 
ner of  voting,  and  its  discussion  plunged  the  Council 
into  the  troubled  sea  of  curial  politics.  The  Italian 
prelates  numbered  almost  half  the  voters,  for  Italy 
was  cut  up  into  many  petty  bishoprics.  If  the  Council 
voted  in  a  mass,  the  Pope  held  the  balance  of  power. 
The  friends  of  union  and  reform  therefore  rejected 
this  usual  custom,  and  it  was  decided  that  all  present 
should  be  divided  into  four  nations,  German,  English, 
French,  and  Italian.  (The  Spanish  was  added  after- 
ward.) Each  nation  was  represented  by  a  fixed 
number  of  deputies,  with  a  president,  changed  every 
month.  All  questions  were  first  discussed  in  national 
assemblies.  The  results  were  communicated  and 
discussed  in  common  meetings  of  the  deputies.  Any 
point  on  which  all  agreed  was  then  discussed  in  a 
general  congregation  and,  if  adopted,  solemnly 
affirmed  in  the  next  General  Session  of  the  Council. 


92  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Armed  with  this   conclusion,  the  friends  of  union 
proceeded  to  deal  with  John. 

They  had  no  easy  task  to  force  him  to  face  the  situa- 
tion. It  was  hard  for  such  a  man,  an  adventurer  fight- 
ing for  his  own  hand,  to  whom  the  idea  of  duty  was 
unknown,  to  get  any  glimpse  of  what  it  meant  to  be 
head  and  servant  of  a  great  institution.  He  knew 
no  better  than  to  keep  on  as  Pope  doing  what  he 
had  done  all  his  life — use  every  circumstance  and 
event  as  something  to  be  squeezed  for  his  own  gain. 
Nor  was  he  without  support.  The  cardinals  probably 
had  no  illusions  in  regard  to  him  as  a  man,  but  it  was 
natural  they  should  stand  by  him  as  Pope.  For  when 
men  have  risen  by  work  or  fortune  to  the  top  of  any 
institution,  it  takes  unusual  greatness  of  mind  or 
character  to  be  very  much  dissatisfied  with  it;  and 
they  are  always  apt  to  be  disinclined  to  any  changes 
not  absolutely  necessary  to  its  life.  D'Ailly,  there- 
fore, stood  almost  alone  among  the  Princes  of  the 
Church  in  desiring  thoroughgoing  reform — reform 
checked  and  guarded  at  every  point,  but  reform 
based,  if  need  be,  on  amendment  of  the  constitution. 
He  stood  by  his  order,  of  course,  but  Gerson  working 
without  and  he  within,  soon  forced  upon  John!  in  spite 
of  every  subterfuge  and  attempt  to  dissolve  the  party 
by  personal  diplomacy,  the  solemn  declaration  "  to 
give  peace  to  the  Church  by  the  method  of  simple 
cession  of  the  Papacy  whenever  Benedict  and  Greg- 
ory, either  in  person  or  by  proper  procurators,  shall 
do  the  same."  But  already  the  report  was  in  the  air 
that  John  would  break  up  the  Council  by  flight. 
Several  princes  warned  the  Archduke  of  Austria, 


The  Flight  of  the  Pope. 


whose  dynastic  ambition  would  be  flattered  by  hav- 
ing a  Pope  to  protect  and  control* to  keep  out  of 
any  such  plot,  and  Sigismund  visited  John  and  bluntly 
told  him  of  the  current  suspicions.  It  is  even  said 
that  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  who  was  in  the  Em- 
peror's train,  forbade  the  Pope  to  his  face  to  dare 
any  such  rebellion  against  the  authority  of  the  Coun- 
cil. John  promised  "  not  to  leave  before  the  disso- 
lution of  the  Council  "  ;  which  his  party  afterward  ex- 
cused by  the  statement  that  the  absence  of  the  Pope 
ipso  facto  dissolved  the  Council. 

Two  days  later  the  evasion  was  skilfully  carried 
out.  By  this  time  a  crowd  of  one  hundred  thousand 
strangers,  with  thirty  thousand  horses,  was  assembled 
at  Constance.  It  was  a  mixed  assembly  of  members  of 
the  Council  and  idle  sight-seers,  and  was  anxious  to  be 
amused.  Musicians  and  jugglers,  estimated  at  seven- 
teen hundred,  ministered  to  the  pleasure  of  the  visitors, 
and  a  great  crowd  of  the  victims  and  tempters  of  the 
vices  of  society  served  its  sins  in  a  commerce  of  evil 
which,  to  the  great  scandal  of  all  honest  men,  even 
involved  some  of  the  worldly  prelates  of  the  Church. 
The  princes,  in  the  spirit  of  perpetual  circus  day  which 
was  common  to  the  time,  vied  with  one  another  in 
display  at  feasts  and  processions ;  and  when  the  Duke 
of  Austria  gave  his  great  tournament  on  the  2Oth  of 
March  all  Constance  went  to  see.  At  nightfall  the 
Pope,  dressed  like  a  groom,  mounted  on  a  mean 
horse  with  an  arquebuse  at  the  saddle-bow,  and, 
covered  with  a  coarse  gray  cloak,  coolly  rode  out  of 
the  gates  with  only  one  boy  in  his  train.  Two  hours 
later  a  hungry  traveller  asked  food  of  the  village 


94  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

pastor  of  Ermatingen,  and  getting  into  a  little  boat, 
was  carried  across  the  sea  to  Schaffhausen,  where  he 
was  joined  the  next  day  by  the  Duke,  its  Sovereign. 
The  news  of  this  evasion,  brought  by  a  letter  from 
John  to  the  Emperor,  threw  all  Constance  into  panic. 
The  timid  members  of  the  Council  prepared  for  in- 
stant flight.  The  mob  began  to  plunder,  and  rumor 
reported  an  army  at  the  gates.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
Council  would  break  up  at  once.  Sigismund  first 
rallied  the  terror-stricken  city.  Riding  through  the 
swarming  streets,  he  put  down  disorder  with  a  strong 
hand,  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  an  assault,  and  bade  every 
one  be  of  good  cheer.  He  called  two  assemblies, 
one  of  the  German  princes,  and  another  of  the  four 
nations.  In  the  first  he  announced  his  purpose  to 
hold  the  Council  together  if  it  cost  his  life,  and  by 
deputation  obtained  from  the  cardinals  the  promise 
to  join  in  conducting  business,  if  necessary,  without 
the  Pope.  They  even  agreed  to  abandon  him  alto- 
gether in  case  his  continued  absence  prevented  union 
and  reform.  Meanwhile  they  asked  that  all  action 
against  him  be  suspended  until  an  embassy  could 
confer  and  report. 

The  Council  itself  was  steadied  by  a  sermon  from 
Gerson  on  John  xii.  35,  which  maintained  that  the 
Church  might  take  counsel  without  the  presence  of 
the  Pope  and,  if  need  be,  force  him  to  close  the  schism. 
The  cardinals  refused  to  be  present  at  the  sermon, 
and  the  Council,  after  waiting  in  vain  for  their  co- 
operation, proceeded  to  a  General  Session  without 
them.  Only  two  of  them  seemed  to  have  been 
aware  of  the  danger.  The  Council  at  Pisa  had 


The  Pope  Deposed. 


met  without  a  Pope,  but  here  was  the  more  fatal 
innovation  of  a  Council  without  cardinals.  D'Ailly, 
the  most  progressive,  and  Zabarella,  one  of  the  more 
conservative  of  the  body,  were  alike  too  old  and 
trained  ecclesiastics  to  be  so  caught.  It  was  bad  to 
be  outvoted ;  it  was  worse  to  be  ignored.  While 
their  brother  princes  sulked  in  their  tents,  they  rushed 
at  once  to  the  Hall,  where  one  acted  as  President, 
and  the  other  read  the  conclusions  of  the  Nations. 

In  the  next  two  sessions,  under  presidence  of  the 
cardinals,  and  after  heavy  debating  carried  on  amid 
a  double  fire  of  pamphlets,  it  was  decided  that  the 
Council  of  Constance,  as  a  true  Ecumenical  Council, 
held  its  power  direct  from  God ;  that  every  Christian, 
even  the  Pope  himself,  was  bound  to  obey  it  in  all 
that  concerned  faith,  the  destruction  of  the  schism, 
and  reform  in  head  and  members ;  and  therefore  "  it 
was  not  dissolved  by  the  blameworthy  and  scandalous 
flight  of  the  Pope,  but  remained  in  all  its  integrity 
and  authority,  even  though  the  Pope  should  declare 
the  contrary."  Thus  the  party  of  union  and  reform 
threw  down  the  glove  before  the  defenders  of  an 
autocratic  Papacy.  Their  victory  was  certain.  As 
long  negotiations  made  plainer  and  plainer  the  un- 
willingness of  John  to  forget  himself  in  his  duty,  even 
the  cardinals,  who  wanted  to  stand  by  him  as  long  as 
possible,  yielded  to  the  pressure  of  circumstances  or 
the  logic  of  events,  and  in  the  eleventh  sitting,  on 
the  2Qth  of  May,  the  President  of  the  College  of  Car- 
dinals added  their  placet  to  the  decree  by  which  John 
XXIII.  was  solemnly  deposed  from  the  Papacy  as  a 
notorious  simoniac,  a  squanderer  of  the  goods  of  the 


The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 


Church,  an  evil  steward,  and  a  man  whose  horrible 
life  and  indecent  manners  both  before  and  after  his 
election  had  given  scandal  to  the  Church  of  God  and 
all  Christian  people.  The  first  stumbling-block  on 
the  way  to  union  and  reform  was  removed. 

Then  the  Council  proceeded  to  remove  the  second  : 
the  heresy  so  wide-spread  in  Bohemia.  For  though 
Huss  hoped  to  appear  at  the  Council  as  a  man  slan- 
dered by  a  charge  of  heresy,  but  really  representing 
a  great  body  of  true  Catholics  desiring  to  persuade 
the  Church  to  necessary  reforms,  his  Bohemian  ene- 
mies and  the  leaders  of  the  other  parties  were  too 
clever  to  let  him  appear  in  any  such  light.  They 
did  not  propose  to  have  a  discussion,  but  a  trial,  and 
they  made  up  their  minds  that,  in  spite  of  the  imperial 
safe-conduct,  Huss's  first  public  appearance  must  be 
as  a  prisoner. 

The  2  ist  of  November,  three  weeks  after  his  arrival, 
two  bishops  appeared  in  Huss's  lodgings  to  lead  him 
to  an  audience  with  the  cardinals.  Baron  von  Chlum, 
as  the  representative  of  the  royal  honor,  at  once  in- 
terfered and  declined  to  allow  anything  to  be  done 
in  Huss's  case  until  Sigismund  had  arrived.  The 
Bishop  of  Trent  replied  that  no  harm  was  intended 
to  Huss;  the  invitation  was  simply  a  friendly  one. 
Whereupon  Huss  at  once  agreed  to  go.  They 
took  him  to  the  palace  of  the  Pope,  where  he  had 
an  audience  with  the  cardinals,  and  in  the  after- 
noon the  Baron  von  Chlum  was  informed  that  he 
might  withdraw  whenever  he  desired,  but  Magister 
Huss  must  remain.  The  knight  at  once  demanded  to 
see  the  Pope,  and  using  the  respectful  forms  of  ad- 


Huss  a  Prisoner.  97 

dress  due  to  his  office,  accused  him  of  treachery  and 
falsehood.  For  he  did  not  fail  in  duty  or  friendship. 
Influential  noblemen,  prelates,  and  burghers  of  Con- 
stance were  shown  the  safe-conduct,  and  begged  to 
defend  the  royal  honor.  Then,  unable  to  do  more, 
he  nailed  his  public  protest,  in  Latin  and  German, 
on  the  door  of  the  cathedral.  Meanwhile  Huss  was 
put  into  a  cell  of  the  Dominican  cloister  so  unwhole- 
some that  in  a  short  time  he  fell  ill,  poisoned  by 
sewer-gas.  When  Sigismund,  met  on  the  road  to 
Constance  by  John  von  Chlum,  heard  of  Huss's  arrest 
without  any  legal  process,  he  flamed  into  wrath  and 
sent  an  order  for  his  instant  release,  with  a  threat  to 
break  the  doors  of  his  prison  and  fetch  him.  But 
before  the  resistance  of  the  Curia  his  purpose  melted, 
and  even  when  the  flight  of  John  put  the  keys  of 
Huss's  prison  into  his  hands,  he  simply  sent  them  to 
the  Bishop  of  Constance,  and  the  prisoner,  worn  by 
illness,  was  thrust  into  the  tower  of  the  episcopal 
castle  at  Gottlieben,  near  Constance,  badly  fed,  com- 
pelled to  carry  chains  by  day,  and  to  sleep  with  his 
hands  fastened  to  the  wall  beside  his  bed.  Mean- 
time the  Council  had  condemned  forty- five  proposi- 
tions drawn  from  the  works  of  Wiclif,  and  declared 
him  a  hardened  heretic  whose  body  ought  not  to  rest 
in  consecrated  ground  ;  a  sentence  carried  out  twelve 
years  later  by  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  who  dug  up  his 
bones.  Then,  as  soon  as  the  Pope  was  deposed,  Huss 
was  summoned  before  the  Council  for  his  first  public 
hearing. 

Public  rumor  and  the  efforts  of  the  emissaries  of 
the  Bohemian  clergy,  the  majority  of  whom  were 


98  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

contributors  to  a  fund  to  pay  the  costs  of  Huss's 
prosecution,  had  surrounded  him  with  such  an  air  of 
heresy  and  violent  revolution  that  in  the  minds  of 
the  Council  he  was  condemned  before  he  appeared, 
and  they  listened  with  scant  patience  at  his  first  in- 
formal hearing.  He  was  interrupted  by  exclamations. 
When  he  claimed  that  he  had  been  misquoted  they 
cried,  "Stop  your  sophistry;  answer  yes  or  no." 
When  he  kept  silence  they  said,  "  Silence  gives  con- 
sent." And  such  an  uproar  finally  arose  that  it  was 
thought  best  to  dismiss  the  assembly.  In  future 
hearings  there  was  fair  play,  for  the  presence  of 
Sigismund  kept  order.  But  his  words  told  strongly 
against  Huss ;  for  he  declared  that  any  single  one  of 
the  propositions  from  his  books  on  which  he  was 
arraigned  was  enough  to  prove  him  a  heretic,  and 
demanded  that  if  he  did  not  recant  he  should  be 
burned.  He  warned  them  not  even  to  trust  his  re- 
cantation, for  if  he  was  not  forbidden  to  preach  or 
see  his  friends  he  would  resume  his  heresy  on  his 
return  to  Bohemia.  If  there  was  any  lingering  doubt 
about  his  fate  this  speech  sealed  it. 

John  von  Chlum  stood  by  him  like  a  man,  and  as 
he  left  the  assembly  seized  him  boldly  by  the  hand 
and  bade  him  be  of  good  cheer.  There  were  others 
who  would  have  saved  him  if  they  could.  He  was 
visited  again  and  again  in  his  prison,  and  the  utmost 
was  done  to  frame  a  formula  of  adjuration  he  would 
accept.  The  final  result  was  skilful  and  fair,  for  it 
Mmited  his  recantation  to  literal  transcriptions  of  prop- 
ositions from  his  books,  and,  embodying  his  denial 
of  utterances  put  into  his  mouth  by  witnesses,  simply 


Huss  Condemned  to  Die.  99 

rejected  them  hypothetically.  To  lead  him  to  accept 
this  formula  the  leaders  of  the  Council  sought  the 
intercession  of  John  von  Chlum  and  his  companion, 
von  Duba.  John  visited  Huss  in  company  with  many 
prelates,  and  said :  "  See,  Magister  John,  we  are  lay- 
men and  cannot  advise  you.  But  if  you  are  guilty 
you  must  not  be  ashamed  to  be  taught  and  recant. 
If,  however,  you  do  not  f^el  yourself  guilty,  you  must 
on  no  account  disobey  your  conscience  and  lie  before 
God,  but  rather  stand  steadfast  in  the  truth  till  death." 
These  words  of  honest  friendship  were  good  to  the 
prisoner  who  had  written  to  the  University  of  Prague 
that  he  was  determined  to  retract  nothing  unless  it 
were  proved  to  be  false  by  the  Word  of  God,  and  fail- 
ing acquittal,  he  would  appeal  from  the  Council  to  the 
judgment-seat  of  Christ.  Such  an  attitude,  denying 
the  authority  of  the  Church  to  determine  belief  and 
rule  conduct,  was  in  itself  heresy  and,  according  to 
the  law,  a  sufficient  ground  of  condemnation. 

Huss  was  brought  before  the  Council  for  sentence 
the  6th  of  July,  1415.  He  was  clad  in  the  garments 
of  a  priest  about  to  say  mass,  and  the  pieces  were  taken 
from  him  by  the  bishops,  according  to  the  usual  for- 
mula. When  they  took  from  his  hand  the  cup  they 
said,  "  Judas,  who  hast  left  the  councils  of  peace  and 
joined  thyself  to  the  council  of  the  Jews,  we  take 
from  thee  the  cup  of  salvation."  To  which  Huss 
answered  with  firm  voice,  "  I  trust  in  the  Lord,  the 
Almighty  God,  for  whose  name's  sake  I  patiently 
bear  these  blasphemies.  He  will  not  take  from  me 
the  cup  of  salvation,  and  I  hope  to  drink  it  with  him 
even  to-day  in  his  Kingdom." 


TOO  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Arrived  at  the  place  of  execution,  he  fell  on  his 
knees  at  sight  of  the  stake,  crying,  "  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  I  will  bear  this  horrible  and  shameful  death 
humbly  and  patiently  for  the  sake  of  thy  gospel  and 
for  the  preaching  of  thy  Word."  He  was  bound  to 
the  stake,  and  wood  and  straw  piled  around  him  as 
high  as  his  chin.  Pappenheim,  the  Marshal  of  the 
Empire,  begged  him  to  recant  and  save  his  life.  Huss 
refused,  and  the  fire  was  lighted.  The  smoke  rolled 
up,  and  before  his  Latin  prayer,  "  Jesus  Christ,  Son 
of  the  living  God,  have  mercy  upon  me,"  could  be 
three  times  intoned  he  died.  They  gathered  the 
ashes  from  around  the  stake  and  cast  them  into  the 
Rhine. 

Eleven  months  afterward  Jerome  of  Prague,  hav- 
ing once  recanted  and  anathematized  the  works  of 
Wiclif  and  Huss,  was  called  to  a  second  trial  on  new 
charges.  He  closed  his  defence  by  declaring  that 
"  the  writings  of  his  master  were  holy  and  right,  like 
his  life,"  and,  refusing  to  recant,  was  burned  as  "  a 
sharer  in  the  errors  of  Huss  and  Wiclif." 

Huss  and  Jerome  died  when  they  were  condemned, 
because  heresy  was  as  much  a  crime  by  the  law  as 
stealing  or  murder.  Their  condemnation  was  inevi- 
table, because,  when  they  met  d'Ailly  and  Gerson, 
two  types  of  men  stood  face  to  face.  Huss  and  Je- 
rome were  not,  indeed,  wanting  in  reverence  for 
inheritance  of  the  past  and  the  institutions  of  society. 
Their  defence  was  full  of  quotations  from  the  men  of 
old,  and  they  came  to  Constance  of  their  own  free  will, 
because  they  loved  the  Church.  But  to  them  the 
truth  was  greater  than  the  symbol  and  religion  more 


The  Antagonists.  loi 

vital  than  any  of  its  institutions.  They  felt  that 
Christ  had  left  in  the  world  a  teaching,  not  a  visible 
authority,  and  it  was  the  duty  of  every  man  to  do 
and  believe  what  his  mind  and  conscience  told  him 
was  in  accord  with  that  teaching.  D'Ailly,  Gerson, 
and  their  followers  were,  on  the  other  hand,  not  in- 
different to  truth.  Gerson's  mystic  piety  was  deep, 
and  we  may  well  believe  that  he  would  have  died  for 
the  truth  as  freely  as  the  two  Bohemians.  But  he  did 
not  believe  that  the  truth  could  continue  to  exist  apart 
from  the  visible  authority  of  the  institution  he  served. 
Neither  Huss  nor  d'Ailly  were  without  personal  am- 
bition. The  acute  Frenchman  tried  to  catch  the 
debate-loving  Hungarian  in  a  scholastic  dilemma  over 
universals  and  prove  him  a  heretic  on  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity.  And  Huss  writes  with  unmistakable  glee 
to  his  friends  how  he  escaped  the  subtle  snare  and 
silenced  "  the  chief  Cardinal  of  them  all."  D'Ailly 
was  so  well  contented  to  be  the  chief  Cardinal  that  he 
was  willing  to  give  a  despised  heretic  the  last  word. 
But  after  all,  both  judge  and  prisoner,  in  spite  of  the 
weakness  of  the  flesh  and  the  gaudium  certaminis, 
stood  resolutely  and  honestly  for  their  convictions. 
Both  believed  in  reason  and  conscience ;  but  the  one 
submitted  his  reason  and  conscience  to  the  invisible 
Christ,  the  other  to  the  visible  Christ,  the  Holy 
Church. 

What  was  expected  of  Huss  had  he  been  an  ortho- 
dox Roman  Catholic  has  been  plainly  exemplified  in 
this  generation  by  those  prelates  who,  after  combat- 
ing the  dogma  of  Infallibility  at  the  Vatican  Council, 
afterward  felt  it  their  duty  to  accept  it  for  the  sake 


IO2  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  charity  and  on  the  authority  of  the  Church.  The 
Bohemians  died  for  refusing  this  authority.  They 
indignantly  asserted  their  fidelity  to  the  entire  re- 
ceived doctrine  of  the  mass.  Jerome  began  his  de- 
fence by  invoking  the  Virgin  Mary  and  all  the  saints, 
and  when  bound  to  the  stake  sang  the  creed  as  a 
proof  that  he  died  in  the  true  faith. 

Huss  was  not  a  great  thinker.  The  parallel  column 
has  shown  unmistakably  that  the  chief  of  his  new  opin- 
ions, and  even  the  forms  of  their  expression,  were  bor- 
rowed from  Wiclif.  It  has  been  mistakenly  claimed 
that  he  shared  in  the  theological  scheme  afterward  as- 
serted by  Luther,  the  solafidean.  But  his  writings  refute 
the  claim,  and  his  dying  assertion  of  faith  in  Jesus  Christ, 
a  quotation  from  the  prayer-book,  is  no  more  a  proof 
that  theologically  he  was  an  "  evangelical "  than  the 
similar  dying  confession  of  St.  Catherine  of  Siena, 
or  a  score  of  other  orthodox  Roman  Catholic  worthies 
of  all  ages.  He  did  not  possess  the  force  or  origi- 
nality of  intellect  needed  to  express  religious  experi- 
ence in  new  theological  formulas.  And  this  makes 
clear  his  courage  and  illuminates  the  significance  of 
his  death.  He  sealed  his  fate  when  he  cried,  "  I  ap- 
peal from  the  Council  to  Christ."  More  plainly,  per- 
haps, than  any  man  in  the  history  of  the  Church,  he 
and  his  friend  died  for  the  dignity  of  the  individual 
soul  and  the  idea  that,  in  the  last  analysis,  religion  is 
a  personal  matter  between  the  Teacher  sent  from 
God  and  every  disciple. 

The  result  of  the  death  of  Huss  and  Jerome  was  the 
revolt  of  Bohemia  against  the  commands  of  the  Church 


Sigismund^  s  Dishonor.  103 

and  the  Empire.  When  their  King  died  the  peasants 
and  nobles  refused  to  receive  his  brother  Sigismund 
as  King  because  he  had  broken  his  word  and  betrayed 
Huss  to  death.  He  has  never  lacked  for  apologetes, 
and  they  have  a  case,  because  the  formal  safe-con- 
duct was  not  intended  to  protect  against  the  law, 
but  only  against  violence.  But  the  instant  they  step 
outside  of  those  formalities  by  which  gentlemen  of  every 
age  and  people  have  always  declined  to  limit  their 
honor,  Sigismund's  defenders  are  in  great  embarrass- 
ment Huss  came  to  Constance  on  reliance  on  his  word. 
The  least  Sigismund  could  have  done  was  to  secure 
fair  play,  to  defend  him  against  being  cast  into  a 
noisome  dungeon  without  due  process  of  law,  to 
have  stood  by  h;m  to  the  end,  and  not  to  have  sealed 
his  fate  even  before  he  was  condemned.  Charles  V., 
when  he  was  urged  to  permit  the  arrest  of  Luther, 
who  came  to  Worms  under  his  protection,  refused 
because  he  did  not  care  'to  blush  like  Sigismund. 
For  it  is  said  that  Huss,  before  he  left  the  cathedral 
on  his  way  to  the  stake,  turned  and  looked  at  Sigis- 
mund, who  looked  down  and  colored.  History  finds 
no  basis  for  the  anecdote,  but  the  judgment  of  most 
honest  men  is  that  if  Sigismund  did  not  blush  he 
ought  to  have  blushed. 

The  war  in  Bohemia,  animated  by  the  two  forces  of 
race  hatred  and  religious  zeal,  soon  took  on  a  character 
of  singular  ferocity.  When  the  crusade  was  pro- 
claimed against  the  heretics,  adventurers  of  all  na- 
tions, led  by  the  offer  of  indulgences  and  the  promise 
of  plunder,  joined  the  German  army.  The  Bohemians 


IO4  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

met  the  cross,  now  become  the  sign  of  oppression  and 
cruelty,  with  the  symbol  of  the  cup.  It  signified  their 
habit  of  communing  in  both  kinds.  In  the  orthodox 
Roman  Catholic  communion  only  the  bread  is  given  to 
the  people,  and  the  wine  is  drunk  by  the  priest.  This 
custom,  originally  caused  by  the  fear  lest  the  blood 
of  Christ  should  be  spilled,  had  come  to  be  associated 
with  the  special  privileges  of  the  clergy  as  priests 
needed  to  mediate  between  the  people  and  God. 
The  habit  of  giving  the  cup  to  the  laity  started  in 
Bohemia  during  Huss's  captivity.  After  some  hesi- 
tation it  was  approved  by  him  as  agreeable  to  the 
example  of  our  Lord  and  his  apostles.  It  soon  be- 
came to  the  people  the  visible  expression  of  that 
appeal  from  the  authority  of  tradition  to  the  word  of 
Christ  found  in  the  Scriptures  and  interpreted  by 
reason  and  conscience,  for  which  he  had  died. 
Under  this  rallying  signal  they  hurled  back  five 
crusades  in  slaughterous  defeat;  and  crossing  the 
borders,  ravaged  Germany  almost  to  the  Rhine  with 
fire  and  sword,  so  that  the  name  Bohemian  or  Hus- 
site remained  for  generations  in  German  villages  a 
word  to  frighten  children.  It  was  eighteen  years 
before  the  Bohemians  came  back  again  to  the  fel- 
lowship of  the  Church. 

The  Council,  having  thus  decided  that  the  centre 
of  ecclesiastical  authority  was  in  itself,  having  deposed 
one  Pope  and  received  the  resignation  of  another,  hav- 
ing cut  off  the  heresy  which  denied  the  supreme  au- 
thority of  the  Church,  was  free  to  proceed  to  that  task 
for  which  all  these  things  were  only  the  preparation 
— the  reform  of  the  Church  in  head  and  members. 


An  Unconquerable  Old  Man.          105 

The  general  good  will  for  this  work  is  suggested 
in  three  sermons,  preached  in  the  end  of  August  and 
beginning  of  September,  1416.  The  first  one  asserted 
that  the  Roman  Curia  is  diabolic  and  almost  all  the 
clergy  of  the  Church  subject  to  the  devil.  The  sec- 
ond, by  Professor  Theobald,  going  into  particulars, 
accuses  the  clergy  of  open  vices,  and  sums  up  the 
situation  in  the  phrase,  "  Praelati  nutriunt  tot  mere- 
trices  quot  familiares."  The  third,  delivered  by  the 
representative  of  the  University  of  Vienna,  on  the 
word  of  Christ  to  the  leper,  "  Go  show  thyself  to  the 
priests,"  cited  the  entire  clergy,  patriarch,  archbishops, 
bishops,  etc.,  as  being  afflicted  with  the  leprosy  of 
worldliness,  dissoluteness,  avarice,  and  simony,  and 
called  on  the  Council  to  heal  this  foul  disease. 

They  began  with  the  deposition  of  Benedict  XIII. 
An  embassy  was  sent  to  his  mountain  fortress  of 
Paniscola  to  announce  it.  The  old  Spaniard's  will 
was  unbroken  by  isolation  and  the  weight  of  over 
ninety  years.  He  received  the  embassy  of  assembled 
Christendom  in  full  regalia,  and  they  began  to  read 
the  sentence  of  the  Council.  The  words  "  her- 
etic "  and  "  schismatic "  brought  an  outburst  of 
wrath.  "It  is  not  true;  you  lie.  Here,"  he  cried, 
beating  the  arm  of  his  chair  with  his  hand,  "  here  is 
the  ark  of  Noah.  I  am  the  true  follower  of  the 
unity  of  the  Church.  Those  at  Constance  are  here- 
tics and  schismatics,  not  I."  For  eight  years  longer 
the  unconquerable  graybeard  held  his  empty  state, 
and  bound  his  two  remaining  cardinals,  under  penalty 
of  his  dying  curse,  to  elect  a  successor.  They  sol- 
emnly shut  themseves  into  conclave  and  elected  the 


io6  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Canon  Mugnos,  who  maintained  the  pomp  and  cir- 
cumstance of  the  little  mountain  Papacy  for  four 
years  more  and  then  resigned,  A.D.  1429. 

The  evils  which  demanded  reform  at  the  hands  of 
the  Council  were  of  two  kinds :  the  unworthy  char- 
acter and  irregular  lives  of  the  clergy,  and  the  exac- 
tions and  corruption  of  the  administration  of  the 
Church  by  the  Roman  Curia.  To  meet  these  evils 
the  party  of  which  Gerson  was  the  ablest  spokesman 
demanded  the  reform  of  the  Church  in  head  and 
members.  The  cause  of  this  corruption,  so  far  as  it 
exceeded  that  measure  of  weakness  and  personal 
ambition  which  may  be  expected  in  all  institutions 
managed  by  men,  was  the  same  as  that  which  lies  at 
the  root  of  the  worst  corruptions  of  our  politics,  the 
temptations  of  an  enormous  patronage.  The  Church 
was  a  very  wealthy  institution.  Its  property  was  not 
dispersed  by  inheritances,  and  grew  constantly  by  gift 
and  bequest.  The  ecclesiastical  lands  in  England,  for 
instance,  were  reckoned  at  a  third  of  the  entire  real 
estate  of  the  kingdom.  Much  of  this  wealth  was 
honestly  spent  in  the  care  of  the  poor  and  the  building 
of  those  mediaeval  churches  which  are  among  the 
most  beautiful  things  ever  made  by  human  hands. 
Much  of  it  was  spent  in  luxury  and  display,  by 
which  numbers  of  unworthy  men  were  tempted  to 
enter  the  priesthood  and  the  manners  and  morals 
of  the  clergy  corrupted.  By  steady  usurpation  of 
privileges  the  Roman  Curia  had  succeeded  in  im- 
posing a  heavy  burden  of  complicated  taxes  on  the 
ecclesiastical  salaries  and  incomes  of  the  world.  The 
foundation  of  direct  taxes  was  the  so-called  right  of 


The  Papal  Taxes.  107 

reservation,  by  which  the  Popes  had  acquired  the 
right  to  fill  vacancies  in  a  large  number  of  bishoprics 
and  abbacies  by  direct  appointment.  All  such  ap- 
pointees were  compelled  to  pay  heavy  taxes — the 
first  year's  income  of  the  benefice,  and  various  other 
sums — to  the  Papal  treasury.  A  second  kind  of  tax, 
direct  and  indirect,  was  indulgences;  by  which  the 
Pope,  usurping  the  rights  of  local  discipline,  sold  by 
his  agents  all  over  the  world  dispensations  from  the 
Church  penance  imposed  upon  various  sins.  The 
right  of  appeal  to  Rome  in  all  ecclesiastical  causes 
was  another  great  source  of  revenue.  For  dispensa- 
tions were  sold  through  the  dioceses  of  the  world, 
by  which  a  clergyman  of  lower  rank  was  freed  from 
some  given  claim  or  right  of  his  superior,  and  made 
secure  of  acquittal  in  the  event  of  an  appeal  to 
Rome.  Then  exemptions  against  these  exemptions 
were  sold  to  the  ecclesiastical  overlord,  until  the 
rights  of  some  of  the  bishops  were  so  tied  up  with  a 
tangle  of  Papal  bulls  that  it  would  have  puzzled  the 
shrewdest  canonical  lawyer  to  define  just  what  power 
remained  to  them  in  many  cases.  To  these  abuses 
of  the  power  of  provisors  and  indulgence  were  at- 
tached two  scandals  which  everybody  had  denounced 
and  no  one  dared  to  defend  for  generations,  and  yet 
which  had  steadily  increased — plurality  of  benefices, 
resulting  in  absenteeism  and  simony  or  the  sale  of 

the  offices  of  the  Church.      It  was  common  for  one 

» 

man  to  hold  several  offices  and  perform  the  du- 
ties of  none.  There  were  bishops  who  knew  noth- 
ing of  the  state  of  religion  in  their  dioceses,  and 
cared  less,  canons  who  had  never  seen  the  cathedral 


io8  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

i 

to  which  they  belonged,  and  priests  who  had  never 
entered  the  bounds  of  their  parishes.  And  the  sale 
of  the  salaried  positions  of  the  Church,  from  the 
Papacy  and  the  red  hat  of  a  cardinal  down  to  door- 
keepers of  the  churches,  was  notorious. 

To  drive  out  these  tables  of  the  money-changers 
from  the  house  of  God  the  Council  needed  something 
more  than  invective.  The  times  demanded  the 
repression  of  the  usurpations  by  which  the  Curia 
had  encroached  upon  episcopal  rights,  and  the  restora- 
tion of  local  government  throughout  the  dioceses ; 
an  absolute  prohibition  of  pluralities,  and  rules 
strictly  regulating  absenteeism  ;  the  devising  of  some 
means  to  convict  simoniacs  and  enforce  upon  them 
the  stern  penalties  of  the  canon  law,  so  long  mere 
dead  letters.  But  ecclesiastical  assemblies,  always 
apt  to  be  cautious,  are  often  cowardly.  And  against 
the  advocates  of  a  thorough  and  sure  reform,  those 
whose  principles  or  whose  interests  led  them  to  de- 
fend the  privileges  of  the  Curia  could  appeal  to  the 
fears  of  the  conservatives  that  reform  would  become 
revolution.  They  had  two  arguments  to  use.  The 
Papal  States  were  in  rebellion  and  but  little  income 
came  from  them.  If  the  Papal  taxes  were  reduced, 
how  could  the  Church  have  any  Pope  and  cardinals 
at  all?  Secondly,  though  the  Council  had  rightly 
deposed  the  Pope  for  the  preservation  of  the  Church, 
the  Church  was  only  rightly  constituted  when  she 
had  a  head,  and  reform  ought  to  be  preceded  by  the 
election  of  a  Pope. 

After  long  discussion  the  twenty-three  cardinals, 
accompanied  by  six  deputies  from  each  of  the 


The  New  Pope.  109 


five  nations,  Spain,  Italy,  France,  England,  and 
Germany,  went  into  conclave  on  the  4th  of  No- 
vember, 1417.  The  great  hall  of  the  merchants' 
house  had  been  divided  into  fifty-three  little  rooms 
by  canvas  walls.  All  access  to  doors  or  windows  was 
shut  off  by  guarded  barriers,  and  no  ship  might  ap- 
proach within  bowshot  of  the  walls.  Two  bishops 
sat  before  the  door  to  inspect  all  food  carried  in,  lest 
notes  might  be  concealed  in  it;  but  the  ancient  rule 
that  after  three  days  they  were  to  receive  only  two 
meals  a  day,  and  after  eight  more  only  one,  was  sus- 
pended— perhaps  out  of  consideration  for  the  carnal 
weakness  of  the  deputies  associated  with  the  cardinals 
in  the  conclave.  On  the  third  day  the  anxious  city 
learned  that  after  a  long  strife  between  the  five  na- 
tions, each  of  which  wanted  a  Pope  of  its  own  tongue, 
the  unanimous  choice  had  fallen  upon  the  Cardinal 
Deacon  Otto,  of  the  ancient  Roman  house  of  Colonna, 
a  man  of  ability  and  honorable  record,  with  a  fine 
personal  appearance  and  dignified  manners.  The 
Emperor  rushed  into  the  conclave  and  kissed  his  feet, 
hailing  him  as  the  morning  star  that  at  last  had  risen 
out  of  darkness,  and  all  Christendom  rejoiced  that 
the  schism  was  safely  closed.  Five  months  later  the 
Cardinal  Deacon  Raynald  called  out,  "  Domini  ite  in 
pace,"  all  answered,  "  Amen,"  and  the  great  Council 
was  over.  But  the  reform  of  the  Church  in  head 
and  members  was  scarcely  begun.  For  the  curial 
party,  under  the  lead  of  Martin  V.,  had  but  little 
difficulty  in  foiling  every  attempt  to  unite  the  nations 
in  any  plan  of  general  reform.  Amid  distrust  and 
despair,  each  began  to  scramble  for  national  privi- 


no  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

leges,  secured  to  them  in  a  series  of  concordats 
signed  by  the  Pope.  And  these  compromise  reforms 
recognized  the  rights  of  the  Pope  in  the  matter  of  the 
very  usurpations  and  abuses  they  abated. 

The  Council  of  Constance  has  involved  the  ortho- 
dox Roman  Catholic  theologian  and  canonist  of  this 
century  in  considerable  embarrassment.  The  Papal 
succession  depends  upon  its  ecumenical  authority, 
for  it  deposed  two  Papal  claimants  as  schismatics, 
compelled  a  third  to  resign,  and  elected  a  new  Pope 
by  an  untraditional  method.  But  the  decree  neces- 
sary to  its  work,  that  the  authority  of  a  General 
Council  was  greater  than  the  authority  of  a  Pope,  is 
of  course  a  denial  of  that  dogma  by  which  the  Vat- 
ican Council  of  1870  completed  the  Catholic  system 
and  defended  it  against  all  change — the  Infallibility 
of  the  Pope.  The  judgment  of  the  learned  Bishop 
Hefele,  in  his  great  "  Conciliengeschichte,"  is  char- 
acteristic :  "  There  can,  therefore,  be  no  doubt  that, 
according  to  the  ecclesiastical  law  of  to-day,  which 
considers  the  approbation  of  the  Pope  upon  General 
Councils  necessary  to  constitute  them  such,  all  con- 
clusions of  .Constance  which  do  not  prejudice  the 
Papacy  are  to  be  considered  ecumenical,  but  all,  on 
the  other  hand,  which  infringe  upon  the  privilege, 
the  dignity,  the  preeminence  of  the  apostolic  chair 
are  to  be  held  for  reprobated." 


PERIOD    I. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE    PAPAL    REACTION — THE    STRUGGLE  FOR  THE 

PATRIMONIUM MARTIN  V.  AND  EUGENIUS  IV. 

REESTABLISH    THE    PAPAL   SUPREMACY   WITH- 
OUT  GRANTING   REFORM THE   PROTEST   AND 

ABORTIVE  SCHISM  OF  THE  COUNCIL  OF  BASLE. 

HE  new  Pope  was  face  to  face  with  a  situa- 
tion that  might  well  have  daunted  a  bolder 
man.  He  entered  Rome  by  streets  almost 
impassable,  past  ruined  churches  and 
empty  or  fallen  houses,  through  a  crowd 
as  wild  and  miserable-looking  as  their  city.  The 
States  of  the  Church  were  all  but  dissolved  into 
strange  or  hostile  municipalities  and  communes,  while 
petty  tyrants  and  soldiers  of  fortune  were  striving  to 
make  principalities  for  themselves  out  of  the  patri- 
mony of  St.  Peter.  And  behind  this  was  the  task 
of  the  reform  of  the  Church  in  head  and  members,  to 
which  he  was  solemnly  pledged. 

To  meet  his  political  difficulties  he  was  fitted  by 
many  characteristics.  He  was  firm,  clever,  had  an 
engaging  personality  that  inspired  confidence,  and 
lived  simply ;  for  he  desired  the  reality  and  not  the 
shows  of  power.  Rome  began  to  become  prosper- 
in 


112  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

ous;  the  citizens  rebuilt  their  houses,  streets  and 
bridges  were  repaired,  and,  led  by  his  example,  some 
of  the  cardinals  rebuilt  their  titular  churches.  Order 
was  restored  around  the  walls  of  the  city  by  the 
destruction  of  robbers,  and  an  annalist  exclaims  with 
wonder  that  one  could  go  through  the  country  with 
gold  in  the  open  hand.  Teachers  of  religion  began 
to  appeal  with  success  to  the  people.  Bernardino  of 
Siena,  for  instance,  came  to  Rome  three  years  after 
Martin's  return,  preaching  repentance.  He  was  the 
son  of  a  noble  family,  who,  feeling  in  his  heart  the 
call  to  preach  Christ,  entered  the  order  of  St.  Francis 
while  still  a  youth.  He  had  acquired  great  influence 
throughout  various  cities  of  Italy,  and  his  success  at 
Rome  was  striking.  Many  blood-feuds  were  recon- 
ciled by  him.  He  was  accustomed  to  denounce  the 
luxury  of  the  times  as  a  chief  cause  of  sin,  and  on 
the  25th  of  June,  1421,  he  publicly  set  fire  to  a  great 
scaffold  on  which  was  piled  false  hair,  cosmetics,  in- 
struments of  music,  worldly  books,  and  many  other 
articles  of  luxury.  Three  days  later  another  pyre 
was  lighted  in  the  presence  of  all  Rome,  which  was 
crowned  by  a  living  woman,  burned  for  witchcraft. 

In  the  attempt  to  recover  the  Papal  State  lost  to 
tyrants  and  rebellious  vassals,  Martin's  chief  opponent 
was  Braccio  Fortebraccio,  a  condottiere,  or  soldier 
of  fortune.  For  the  Breton  or  German  leaders  of 
the  Free  Companies  of  the  fourteenth  century  were 
now  quite  largely  replaced  by  Italians  trained  in  their 
troops  and  rising  from  the  ranks.  The  two  most 
celebrated  of  these  were  Jacopo  Sforza  and  Braccio 
Fortebraccio.  Sforza,  the  son  of  a  peasant,  had  run 


The  Sins  of  Martin  V.  113 

away  from  home  and  enlisted  at  the  age  of  thirteen. 
Rising  to  fame,  he  had  used  his  twenty  brothers  and 
sisters  to  extend  and  hold  his  power.  His  frank 
manners,  strict  honesty  in  all  money  engagements, 
the  care  with  which  he  protected  the  peasants  from 
pillage,  and  his  reluctance  to  destroy  conquered  cities 
made  him  respected  even  while  feared,  and  he  was 
called  "  the  common  father  of  the  men-at-arms." 
His  rival,  Braccio,  seems  to  have  been  a  rougher 
sort — a  breaker  of  his  word,  a  layer  of  plots,  and  a 
burner  of  harvest- fields,  who  put  the  country-side  in 
terror.  But  he  was  firmly  fixed  in  his  usurpations, 
and  the  Pope  could  only  get  into  Rome  by  receiving 
him  at  Florence  and  naming  him  Vicar  for  the  rule 
of  some  of  his  best  cities. 

Two  traits  prevented  Martin  from  having  a  good 
will  for  the  reform  of  the  Church — pride  and  the 
greed  of  gold.  The  latter  was  so  notorious  that  a 
celebrated  writer  among  the  curial  secretaries  hesi- 
tated to  publish  an  essay  "  On  Avarice,"  lest  it 
should  be  thought  an  attack  on  the  Pope.  No  avari- 
cious Pope  could  honestly  desire  reform.  Nor  would 
the  head  of  the  Colonna  consent  to  lessen  the  wealth 
and  power  of  the  city  which  was  the  background  of 
the  dignity  of  his  race.  His  nepotism  was  as  marked 
as  that  of  poorer  Popes,  who  thought  it  neces- 
sary to  create  great  relatives  for  their  own  support. 
And  during  his  life  the  family  of  Colonna  were 
everywhere  advanced  and  enriched.  The  sale  of 
benefices  and  the  whole  system  of  fees  and  perquisites, 
which  crushed  all  poor  appellants  to  the  justice  of 
the  Papal  court,  increased,  and  the  Papal  usurpations 


1 14  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  episcopal  rights  on  which  these  abuses  were 
founded  were  silently  maintained,  in  spite  of  the  pro- 
tests and  agreements  of  Constance.  It  was  not  to 
be  supposed  that  this  was  done  without  opposition. 
It  had  been  agreed  at  Constance  that  a  new  Synod 
was  to  be  assembled  at  Pavia  within  five  years,  but 
its  temper  was  so  dangerous  when  it  met  that  the 
Pope  adjourned  it  to  Siena,  and  then  closed  it  to 
await  the  General  Council  which  had  been  appointed 
for  the  tenth  year  after  Constance.  Meantime  he 
pleased  Christendom  by  appointing  to  the  College  of 
Cardinals  half  a  dozen  men  whose  wisdom  or  piety 
fitted  them  in  the  eyes  of  all  for  the  dignity  of  Princes 
of  the  Church.  Then,  just  on  the  eve  of  the  assembly 
of  an  Ecumenical  Council  at  Basle,  he  died  (1431). 

Martin  had  in  every  way  repressed  the  powers  of 
the  cardinals,  and  before  they  proceeded  to  a  new 
election,  the  College,  the  most  weighty  and  dignified 
for  many  years,  passed  the  first  of  the  capitulations 
which  hereafter  every  Pope  was  compelled  to  accept. 
It  was  an  attempt  to  preserve  the  Papacy  in  the  form 
of  an  aristocratic  oligarchy  where  the  Pope  was  the 
first  of  the  cardinals,  and  to  defend  their  rights  as  a 
senate  governing  the  Church  with  him.  In  practice, 
however,  it  always  failed  of  its  purpose  and  never  seri- 
ously checked  the  growing  absolutism  of  the  Papacy. 

The  so-called  rhythm  of  the  Papacy,  by  which  the 
opposition  party  generally  elects  the  new  Pope,  gave 
the  votes  to  the  candidate  of  the  Orsini,  the  Roman 
family  which  rivalled  the  Colonna.  Eugenius  IV.  was 
forty-eight  years  old  and  had  been  made  Cardinal  by 
his  uncle,  Gregory  XII.,  in  1408.  His  appearance, 


The  Generous  Eugenius.  115 

writes  a  chronicler,  was  so  majestic  that  once,  when 
he  appeared  upon  a  platform  to  intone  the  prayer  in 
a  service  at  Florence,  the  people  who  crowded  the 
great  square  were  moved  to  tears  before  the  figure 
"  of  the  Vicar  of  Christ,  who  seemed  to  be  he  whom 
he  represented."  His  pious  habit  never  varied. 
Amid  all  his  business,  four  monks,  two  of  his  own 
order,  were  always  with  him  to  conduct  the  proper 
offices  of  day  and  night,  in  which  he  never  failed  to 
join.  He  was  free  from  nepotism  and  avarice.  His 
relatives,  who  flocked  to  him,  received  nothing  from 
the  goods  of  the  Church.  He  answered  that  he 
could  not  give  away  what  was  not  his.  But  many 
stories  are  told  of  his  generosity.  Once  he  offered 
to  a  poor  Florentine  who  begged  for  help  a  purse  of 
gold  pieces  and  told  him  to  help  himself.  The 
abashed  man  took  only  two  or  three.  "  Oh,"  laughed 
Eugenius,  "  put  your  hand  in.  You  are  welcome  to 
the  gold." 

The  nepotic  and  avaricious  Martin  had  ruled  Rome 
in  peace,  but  the  generous  and  unworldly  Eugenius 
lived  in  the  midst  of  civil  war.  For  the  sins  of  his 
predecessor  were  visited  on  his  head.  The  castles 
and  cities  of  the  patrimonium  were  garrisoned  by  the 
soldiers  of  the  Colonnas ;  the  Papal  jewels  and  a  large 
part  of  the  treasure  of  St.  Peter  were  in  their  hands. 
When  summoned  they  declined  to  surrender  them  to 
a  Pope  who  had  been  the  candidate  of  the  rival  family 
of  Orsini.  When  Eugenius  became  peremptory  they 
assaulted  the  city,  seized  and  held  one  of  the  gates, 
and  the  slaughter  and  burning  of  civil  war  rilled  the 
streets  of  a  part  of  Rome  for  a  month. 


1 1 6  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Scarcely  was  this  bloody  trouble  ended  by  the  en- 
tire submission  of  the  Colonna  and  the  surrender  of 
everything  claimed  by  the  Pope  than  the  Council  met 
at  Basle,  and  the  Papacy  had  to  face  again  that  great 
episcopal  system  whose  rights  it  had  so  continuously 
usurped.  The  prelates  reaffirmed  the  decision  of 
Constance  that  the  Council  was  independent,  indis- 
soluble, except  by  its  own  consent,  and  superior  to 
the  Pope,  and  summoned  Eugenius  to  appear  within 
three  months  for  trial.  These  things  strengthened 
the  local  enemies  of  the  Pope.  Different  bands  of 
condottieri,  the  chief  of  whom  called  himself  General 
of  the  Holy  Council,  besieged  him  in  Rome.  Thus 
driven  to  a  corner,  Eugenius  recalled  the  bulls  dis- 
solving the  Council,  acknowledged  it  as  the  highest 
authority,  and  put  himself  under  its  protection. 
By  this  time  many  prelates,  including  seven  cardi- 
nals, were  assembled ;  the  Council  was  supported 
by  all  the  powers,  and  it  seemed  that  the  principle  of 
Conciliar  Authority  had  obtained  a  second  and  lasting 
victory  over  Papal  absolutism. 

But  Eugenius  could  not  make  his  peace  with  the 
Romans.  Wearied  by  the  endless  war  which  wasted 
their  lands,  they  rose  with  the  old  cry  of  "  The  folk, 
the  folk  and  freedom ! "  established  the  Republic,  and 
forced  the  captive  Pope  to  renounce  the  worldly  power. 
Then  Eugenius  fled.  A  reformed  pirate,  Vitellius  of 
Ischia,  had  recently  been  taken  into  the  Papal  service, 
and  his  galley  lay  at  Ostia.  Disguised  as  a  Domini- 
can monk,  the  Pope  slipped  out  of  the  back  door, 
while  some  bishops  appeared  to  wait  his  immediate 
^coming  to  the  audience-chamber.  A  mule  brought 


The  Pope  Flees.  1 1 7 

him  to  the  river-bank,  and  a  servant  of  the  ex-pirate 
carried  the  Pope  on  his  back  through  the  shallow 
water  to  a  boat.  But  suspicion  was  aroused,  for  it 
was  full  daylight,  and  a  great  crowd  pursued.  They 
put  the  Pope  in  the  bottom  and  covered  him  with  a 
shield,  and  the  seamen  of  Vitellius  rowed  down  the 
river  amid  a  storm  of  stones  and  arrows  until  they 
distanced  the  cursing  Romans  and  landed  their  pas- 
senger on  the  galley.  The  Romans  had  often  driven 
the  Popes  from  Rome  and  called  them  back  again, 
for  they  were  a  folk  impatient  of  authority  and  in- 
capable of  self-rule ;  but  it  might  have  comforted 
Eugenius,  as  he  lay  under  the  shield,  could  he  have 
known  that  none  of  his  successors  for  four  hundred 
years  would  again  be  compelled  to  flee  before  an 
insurrection  of  their  own  people. 

In  June,  1434,  the  Pope  sought  the  protection  of 
the  Republic  of  Florence  and  took  up  his  residence 
in  that  city.  Every  petty  tyrant  in  the  Papal  States, 
suppressed  or  appeased  by  the  policy  or  strength  of 
the  family  of  Martin,  now  seized  the  opportunity 
given  by  the  rebellious  Colonna.  And  once  more  it 
was  evident  that  if  the  Vicar  of  Christ  was  to  be 
ruler  of  a  kingdom  of  this  world,  the  Church  had 
need  of  a  prince  who  could  hide  the  silk  glove  of  a 
cardinal  in  the  gauntlet  of  a  man-at-arms.  He  was  at 
hand  in  the  person  .of  Giovanni  Vitelleschi,  who  began 
life  as  the  clerk  of  a  condottiere,  afterward  went  into 
ecclesiastics,  and  had  become  Bishop  of  Recanati. 
He  had  already  been  Papal  legate  in  the  march  of 
Ancona,  where  he  had  displayed  skill  in  war  and  a 
ruthless  temperament.  Eugenius  gave  him  the  task 


1 1 8  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  destroying  petty  tyrants,  rooting  out  the  condot- 
tieri  and  subduing  Rome.  The  terrible  priest,  who 
had  already  shown  himself  not  slow  to  shed  blood, 
fought  fire  with  fire.  One  by  one  the  fierce  barons 
were  bribed  or  forced  to  peace.  The  Prefect  of  Vico, 
descendant  of  a  family  which  had  been  a  thorn  in 
the  side  of  the  Popes  for  three  hundred  years,  was 
besieged,  forced  to  surrender,  and  beheaded.  Re- 
bellious Rome,  half  frightened,  longing  for  the  money 
spent  by  the  Curia,  and  envious  of  the  glory  given 
to  Florence  by  the  presence  of  the  Pope,  invited  him 
to  return.  And  Vitelleschi,  reporting  his  successes 
to  Eugenius,  was  made  Archbishop  of  Florence  and 
Patriarch  of  Alexandria.  Then  he  was  sent  back  to 
finish  his  work.  He  hung,  beheaded,  and  strangled 
the  tyrants  wherever  he  could  lay  hands  on  them, 
and  with  patient  destructiveness  levelled  the  walls, 
churches,  and  houses  of  some  of  the  feudal  strong 
places  whence  the  fierce  nobility  had  for  generations 
threatened  the  supremacy  of  law  and  made  stable 
government  all  but  impossible.  The  head  of  a  second 
conspiracy  in  Rome  was  drawn  through  the  streets 
on  a  hurdle,  torn  with  red-hot  pincers,  and  then 
quartered.  Thus  a  stern  will  made  stillness  rest  upon 
a  land  of  wasted  fields  and  the  ruins  of  thirty  de- 
stroyed cities.  The  thoroughly  cowed  Roman 
burghers  voted  him  an  equestrian  statue  on  the 
Capitol,  inscribed  to  "  Giovanni  Vitelleschi,  Patriarch 
of  Alexandria,  the  third  father  of  the  State  after 
Romulus."  The  Colonna  were  humbled  to  the  very 
dust,  and  of  their  family  city  fortress  not  one  stone 
was  left  upon  another.  Then  the  riches  and  power  of 


The  Fighting  Bishop.  119 

the  man  who  had  done  this  work  excited  suspicion. 
Vitelleschi,  now  become  a  Cardinal,  was  on  his  way  to 
Tuscany,  and  crossed  the  bridge  of  San  Angelo  in  the 
rear  of  his  army.  The  portcullis  was  suddenly  dropped 
on  one  end  and  a  chain  drawn  across  the  other.  The 
men-at-arms  from  the  castle  of  San  Angelo  fell  upon 
him,  and,  in  spite  of  a  desperate  defence,  carried  him 
a  wounded  prisoner  into  the  castle.  When  his  army 
turned  back  in  rage  at  the  news,  they  were  met  by 
the  closed  gates  and  cannon  of  the  castle,  while  the 
governor  waved  over  the  battlements  the  parchment 
order  for  their  general's  arrest,  stamped  with  the 
Papal  seal.  A  month  later  Vitelleschi  was  dead. 
He  was  a  striking  representative  of  the  class  created 
by  the  Dominium  Temporale,  the  fighting  priest 
whose  prototype  was  the  fighting  Pope  Julius  II., 
who  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  century  was  to  set 
up  over  the  church  door  of  a  conquered  city  a  statue 
of  himself  cast  from  captured  cannon. 

Meanwhile,  strengthened  by  the  iron  hand  of  his 
servant,  Eugenius  had  resumed  resistance  to  the 
Council  of  Basle  with  great  success.  At  first  the  party 
of  reform  had  things  all  their  own  way.  But  for 
reasons  which  seem  not  at  all  clear,  their  sweeping  de- 
crees for  reform  produced  a  powerful  reaction.  And 
the  Papacy  found  able  and  worthy  defenders  in  Juan 
Torquemada,  who  asserted  its  infallibility,  Ambrogio, 
Travasari,  and  the  noble  Cardinal  Cesarini.  Eugenius 
had  been  in  negotiation  for  union  with  the  Eastern 
Church,  and  had  succeeded  in  procuring  submission 
to  the  Chair  of  St.  Peter  as  a  condition  of  the  military 
aid  of  Western  Christendom  in  resisting  the  Turk. 


1 20  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

The  necessity  of  having  a  meeting-place  more  con- 
venient for  the  embassy  of  Constantinople  enabled 
him  to  carry  off  the  most  influential,  though  the 
smaller,  part  of  the  Council  to  Ferrara  and  then  to 
Florence.  There,  in  July,  1439,  the  Patriarch  of 
Constantinople  kissed  his  hand,  and  the  Emperor 
formally  acknowledged  that  the  Patriarch  of  Rome 
was  the  Vicar  of  Christ  and  the  supreme  head  of  the 
entire  Church.  This  reconciliation  was  merely  a 
political  necessity,  shortly  after  renounced  by  the 
entire  Greek  Church,  but  for  the  time  it  strengthened 
the  cause  of  Eugenius.  And  when  the  Council  of 
Basle,  having  deposed  him,  elected  a  new  Pope,  Felix 
V.,  in  November,  1439,  the  powers  of  Europe, 
shrinking  in  horror  from  a  new  schism,  refused  to 
recognize  him.  France,  indeed,  had  the  courage  to 
adopt  all  the  decrees  of  Basle  in  the  Pragmatic  Sanc- 
tion passed  by  a  national  Synod  at  Bourges,  and  to 
compel  from  Eugenius  as  the  price  of  her  support 
the  recognition  of  the  episcopal  rights  of  the  national 
Church.  Germany  tried  to  do  the  same  thing.  She 
declared  her  neutrality  in  the  schism,  and  demanded 
needed  reforms  before  she  would  declare  obedience 
to  Eugenius.  The  embassy  from  the  princes  and 
prince  bishops  obtained  an  acknowledgment  of  the 
preeminence  of  the  Council  and  the  promise  of  re- 
forms ;  but  the  Pope,  before  he  handed  the  bulls  to 
the  ambassadors  from  his  death-bed,  had  signed  a 
previous  bull  providing  that  his  concessions,  which 
were  made  at  a  time  when  his  judgment  was  weak- 
ened by  illness,  should  be  null  if  they  in  any  way 
injured  the  teaching  of  the  fathers  and  the  rights  of 


A   Weak  Surrender. 


the  Holy  Chair  of  St.  Peter.  But  his  successor  did 
not  need  to  appeal  to  it.  The  jealous  strife  between 
the  petty  German  princes  gave  too  broad  an  opening 
for  the  diplomacy  of  clever  legates.  The  Roman  King 
(title  of  the  Emperor  elect)  had  already  sold  his  sup- 
port for  a  paltry  bribe  in  money  and  patronage  ;  the 
princes  and  bishops  were  only  too  ready  to  be  bribed, 
and  in  the  concordats  of  Aschaffenburg  and  Vienna 
(1447-1448)  they  signed  away  the  national  rights 
which  the  French  episcopate  had  successfully  de- 
fended. 


PERIOD    I. 
CHAPTER  XI. 

THE    SPREAD    OF    HUMANISM. 

HILE  the  Papacy,  using  an  ecclesiastical 
reaction  and  the  skilful  diplomacy  which 
surrendered  individual  aggressions  to  re- 
serve the  principle  of  Papal  autocracy,  had 
resisted  reform  and  weakened  the  power 
both  of  the  College  of  Cardinals  and  the  advocates  of 
Conciliar  Authority,  the  movement  of  the  New  Learn- 
ing was  finding  broader  and  stronger  expression.  The 
light  centred  in  Florence  by  the  three  first  followers 
of  Petrarch — Boccaccio,  Marsigli,  Salutato — and  their 
friends  had  been  spread  over  all  North  Italy  by  the 
efforts  of  a  race  of  wandering  teachers.  These 
pioneers  of  learning  may  be  represented  in  short 
sketches  of  two,  the  most  characteristic  of  their 
generation. 

Giovanni  di  Conversino  was  a  poor  boy  who  won 
distinction  in  the  school  of  Donate  at  Venice,  and 
was  sent  to  Petrarch  to  act  as  copyist.  He  left  that 
barren  employment  because  he  wanted  to  learn 
Greek  and  see  the  world,  and  led  henceforth  a  rest- 
less life,  whose  hopes  and  pride  were  always  larger 
than  its  fortunes.  The  poor  fellow  never  fulfilled  his 

122 


Chrysoloras.  123 

early  ambition  to  learn  Greek,  but  went  to  Florence, 
to  Rome,  to  Belluno,  Padua,  Ragusa,  Udine,  to  Padua 
again,  and  back  to  Florence.  Now  he  was  private 
secretary,  now  notary,  now  lecturer  on  Cicero,  now 
master  of  a  Latin  school.  He  must  have  had  some 
of  the  elements  of  a  great  teacher,  for  we  are  told  by 
one  of  his  scholars  that  he  "  led  the  way  to  virtue 
not  only  by  showing  the  examples  of  the  ancients, 
but  by  his  own  walk  and  conversation."  Two  of  the 
greatest  teachers  Italy  ever  had,  Guarino  and  Vit- 
torino,  sat  at  his  feet,  and  it  is  a  pity  to  think  of  the 
impossible  man  passing  through  so  many  good  posi- 
tions to  earn  the  scanty  bread  of  his  old  age  as  a 
giver  of  lessons  in  Venice  to  any  scattered  pupils  he 
could  pick  up. 

A  still  more  striking  figure  is  Chrysoloras,  the 
first  of  the  line  of  learned  men  who  were  to  flee 
from  Constantinople,  then  tottering  to  its  fall  be- 
fore the  assaults  of  the  Turk.  The  Greek  scholar- 
ship of  Constantinople  does  not  seem  to  have  had 
within  itself  the  seed  of  growth ;  but  it  possessed  by 
inheritance  the  manuscripts  in  which  were  recorded 
the  origins  of  our  poetry,  our  philosophy,  and  our 
religion,  and  the  knowledge  of  the  language  in  which 
they  were  written.  Italy  had  long  desired  to  know 
Greek,  and  when  news  came  that  Chrysoloras,  a  dis- 
tinguished teacher  of  rhetoric  and  philosophy,  had 
landed  in  Venice  to  seek  aid  for  the  Empire  against 
the  Turk,  two  noble  Florentines  went  at  once  to  see 
him.  One  of  them  returned  with  him  to  Constanti- 
nople. The  other  brought  to  Florence  so  glowing  a 
report  of  his  learning  and  personality  that  Salutato 


124  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

induced  the  city  to  call  him  for  ten  years  as  a 
teacher  of  Greek,  with  a  salary  of  one  hundred 
florins  and  fees.  In  1396  he  came.  A  great 
crowd  went  to  hear  his  instruction,  but  it  is  melan- 
choly to  find  that  none  of  the  older  men,  like 
Salutato,  who  had  longed  so  earnestly  for  this  trea- 
sure, were  able  to  master  the  difficulties  of  the  tongue. 
Chrysoloras  formed  in  Florence  some  able  young 
scholars,  and  wandered  to  Pavia,  then  back  again  to 
Byzantium,  and  returned  once  more  to  Venice  and 
Florence  on  his  way  to  Rome.  From  thence  he 
visited  France,  Spain,  and  England,  came  back  to 
Rome,  and  was  sent  by  the  Pope  on  a  mission  to 
Byzantium.  Returned,  he  was  despatched  to  Ger- 
many, and  finally  died  at  the  Council  of  Constance. 
Thus  the  long  beard  and  flowing  garments  of  the 
Greek  reminded  the  students  of  the  world  that  the 
tongue  of  Homer,  Plato,  and  John  might  be  learned 
and  its  lost  treasures  recovered. 

A  little  army  of  such  scouts  of  learning,  most  of 
whose  names  are  long  forgotten,  wandered  from  city 
to  city,  seeking  or  giving  knowledge.  And  through 
their  labors  there  were  soon  scattered  over  Italy  knots 
of  men  who  loved  to  live  laborious  days  in  the  pur- 
suit of  truth  and  beauty. 

The  leaders  in  this  love  of  learning  were  of  the 
country  of  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio,  and  the 
capital  of  their  little  state  was  not  only  the  defender 
of  liberty,  but  the  Athens  of  Italy. 

Florence,  like  London  to-day,  was  the  centre  of 
trade  and  the  financial  exchange  of  the  world.  The 
most  remarkable  of  her  merchant  princes  and  rich 
bankers  was  Cosimo  de'  Medici.  His  father,  Giovanni 


Cosimo  de'  Medici.     ,  125 

de'  Medici  (died  1428),  left  to  his  two  sons,  Cosimo 
and  Lorenzo,  a  fortune  acknowledged  as  179,221 
gold  florins.  This  wealth  was  enormously  increased 
by  Cosimo's  skill  as  a  merchant  and  banker.  The 
figures  will  indicate  what  this  means.  Lorenzo,  who 
died  in  1440,  left  253,000  florins.  Piero,  Cosimo's 
son,  who  died  in  1469,  left  238,000;  and,  besides  the 
expenses  of  living,  the  family  had  spent  between  1434 
and  1471  in  taxes,  benefactions,  and  public  buildings 
664,000  florins,  of  which  Cosimo,  who  died  in  1464, 
paid  400,000.  So  that,  besides  the  expenses  of  living, 
the  1 80,000  florins  of  the  grandfather  had  in  less  than 
fifty  years  gained  for  his  descendants  1,000,000 
florins,  or  one  half  the  total  coined  money  circulating 
in  the  Republic  in  1422. l  It  was  the  rule,  so  well 
illustrated  in  the  history  of  some  American  families, 
that  money  skilfully  handled  breeds  money;  but 
more  than  two  thirds  of  the  increase  of  two  gen- 
erations of  the  Medici  accrued  to  the  public 
benefit  in  taxes,  charities,  and  gifts  to  learning  or 
the  arts. 

The  relation  of  Cosimo  to  his  city  can  be  easily 
appreciated  by  the  Americans  of  to-day.  He  was 
the  boss  of  the  little  Republic  of  Florence,  then  a 
city  of  about  ninety  thousand  inhabitants.  His 
family  were  among  the  hereditary  leaders  of  the 
democracy  against  the  party  of  millionaire  manufac- 
turers and  middle-class  merchants  who  desired  to 
retain  power  in  order  to  control  the  tariff.  And 
they  had  been  very  influential  in  the  uprising  of 

1  These  figures  do  not  mean  much  to  the  modern  reader.  The 
florin  was  worth  about  $2.50,  but  the  cost  and  scale  of  living  are  dif- 
ficult to  estimate.  In  1460  the  Patriarch  of  Aquileja  was  called  the 
richest  man  in  Italy.  He  left  200,000  florins. 


126  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

1378,  which  resulted  in  the  extension  of  suffrage 
to  the  working-man.  Cosimo  was  simple  in  his 
habits,  given  to  hospitality,  liberal  in  sharing  the 
enjoyment  of  the  treasures  of  art  and  learning  with 
which  his  palace  was  filled,  generous  where  it  would 
do  the  most  good,  reserved,  but  affable  of  speech. 
Hiding  his  secrets  behind  an  impenetrable  veil  of  in- 
variable courtesy,  he  gathered  into  his  hands  all  the 
wires  that  moved  Florentine  politics,  and,  seeking  no 
public  honors  for  himself,  was  nearly  always  able  to 
control  the  City  Council  and  quietly  shape  the  policy 
of  the  Republic.  His  hands  were  free  from  taking 
bribes,  though  he  did  not  scruple  to  handle  for  its 
full  value  the  patronage  he  controlled.  And  doubt- 
less one  great  cause  of  his  success  as  a  money-lender 
and  merchant  was  his  early  and  intimate  knowledge 
of  political  movements.  His  commercial  correspon- 
dents were  scattered  over  all  Europe,  the  Levant, 
and  even  in  Egypt.  He  had  loaned  money  on  the 
security  of  the  public  income  to  the  State  of  Florence 
and  to  every  burgher  who  wished  to  borrow  of  him. 
And  yet  he  used  his  power  so  gently  that  he  con- 
quered envy  and  received  by  public  decree  the  title 
of  "Father  of  the  Fatherland." 

The  Florentine  merchant  nobility  had  long  been  in 
the  habit  of  protecting  and  enjoying  art  and  literature. 
It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  Cosimo  should  employ 
his  striking  critical  taste,  trained  by  reading  and  dis- 
cussion, his  enormous  wealth,  his  knowledge  of  men, 
finished  by  travel  and  the  conduct  of  affairs,  his  cor- 
respondence, spread  over  all  countries  of  the  world, 
in  forming  collections  of  books  and  manuscripts,  in 


Niccolo  dey  Niccoli.  127 

employing  men  of  genius,  and  becoming  the  leading 
patron  of  art  and  letters  in  Italy.  The  most  efficient 
of  his  friends  and  proteges  in  this  work  was  Niccolo 
de'  Niccoli.  He  was  the  son  of  a  small  merchant  of 
the  city,  who,  inheriting  a  very  modest  fortune, 
abandoned  business  and  gave  himself  up  to  the  pro- 
fession of  a  connoisseur  and  collector  of  manuscripts 
and  objects  of  art.  The  stout  little  man  who 
always  dressed  with  scrupulous  care  was  very 
fond  of  society,  and  the  soul  of  every  company ; 
but  somewhat  feared  withal,  because  of  a  touch  of 
sarcasm  in  his  irresistibly  funny  speeches.  He  was 
a  good  deal  of  a  beau  in  his  younger  days,  and  we 
learn  from  letters  that  he  and  his  friend  Bruni  used 
to  wait  round  the  doors  of  the  churches  to  see  the 
pretty  girls  come  out.  But  he  never  married,  be- 
cause he  knew  that  if  he  had  a  wife  he  must  give  up 
collecting  books.  He  was  more  than  consoled  by 
forming  out  of  his  moderate  income  the  best  library 
in  Florence — eight  hundred  manuscripts,  all  rare, 
some  of  them  unique.  When  an  over-enthusiastic 
purchase,  as,  for  instance,  the  library  of  Salutato, 
had  reduced  him  for  the  time  to  poverty,  he  hung 
on  to  the  books  and  economized  until  he  could  pay 
for  them.  He  had,  besides,  a  small  but  good  collec- 
tion of  gems,  statues,  coins,  and  pictures.  But  he 
lived  no  comfortless  life  of  the  traditional  old  bachelor. 
He  loved  to  see  a  piece  of  fine  linen,  a  crystal  gobletj 
an  antique  vase,  some  bits  of  choice  pottery  on  his 
table. 

He  was  the  centre  of  correspondence  for  the  Hu- 
manists of  his  day,  and  not  to  know  Niccoli  was  to  be 


128  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

unknown  in  the  realm  of  letters.  He  was  the  great- 
est living  authority  on  manuscripts,  with  an  infallible 
eye  for  an  old  codex,  and  an  extended  practical 
knowledge  of  the  then  unknown  science  of  diplo- 
matics. He  was  the  first  collector  who  let  his  uniques 
be  copied,  and  showed  a  liberality  in  regard  to  his 
treasures  absolutely  unequalled.  At  his  death  it 
was  found  that  two  hundred  of  his  volumes  were 
loaned.  His  house  was  always  open  and  was  the 
meeting-place  of  the  literati  and  artists  of  Florence. 
It  was  also  a  sort  of  free  school,  for  sometimes  there 
were  ten  or  twelve  young  men  reading  quietly  in  the 
library,  while  Niccoli  walked  about  the  room,  giving 
instructions  or  asking  now  one  and  then  another  his 
impressions  of  what  he  read.  And  yet  he  was  no 
easy  man  to  get  on  with.  His  spirit  was  intensely 
critical,  and  a  friend  writes  that  even  of  the  dead  he 
never  praised  any  but  Plato,  Virgil,  Horace,  and 
Jerome.  He  was  neglectful  of  formalities  toward 
others  and  exceedingly  touchy  in  regard  to  himself, 
and  the  later  years  of  the  peppery  old  man  were 
filled  with  quarrels.  Cosimo  did  everything  for  him. 
His  word  was  law  in  regard  to  appointments  and 
dismissals  at  the  High  School  of  Florence.  And  it 
was  understood  that  whenever  he  was  unable  to  pay 
for  a  book  he  had  only  to  send  a  note  to  Cosimo's 
cashier,  who  had  standing  orders  to  discount  it  at 
*once — a  graceful  way  of  making  a  gift,  for  Niccoli 
died  five  hundred  florins  in  his  patron's  debt.  He  had 
always  been  wont  to  rebuke  the  jests  against  religion 
of  the  free-thinkers  among  his  literary  friends, 
and  he  made  an  edifying  end,  His  last  words  gave 


Book-hunting.  1 29 


directions  as  to  what  was  to  be  done  with  his 
books. 

Men  like  these — for  Cosimo  and  Niccoli  were  only 
the  most  skilful  of  many  connoisseurs  of  art  and  let- 
ters in  Florence — searched  the  world  for  the  remains 
of  classical  antiquity.  And  there  was  no  lack  of 
patient  explorers  who  gladly  gave  their  years  to  this 
service.  We  have  a  suggestion  of  such  toils  and 
pleasures  in  letters  describing  the  book-hunts  of  three 
young  secretaries  at  the  Council  of  Constance.  One 
day,  for  instance,  they  took  boat  to  the  Benedictine 
abbey  on  the  island  of  Reichenau.  On  another  they 
crossed  to  the  north  shore  of  the  lake  and  rode 
eighteen  or  twenty  miles  inland  to  the  old  abbey  of 
Weingarten.  Sometimes  they  got  much,  sometimes 
little ;  but,  like  fishermen,  they  never  let  success  suffer 
in  the  telling  of  it. 

Their  best  trip  was  to  the  abbey  of  St.  Gall.  This 
abbey,  founded  in  the  seventh  century,  had  been  for 
generations,  through  its  convent  school,  a  centre  of 
light,  but  the  degenerate  monks  were  so  forgetful  of 
the  ancient  glories  of  their  house  that  the  library  was 
thrust  into  a  dusty  tower  and  left  to  worms  and 
decay.  Doubtless  much  was  already  gone,  but  the 
indignant  friends  found  something  to  fill  Florence 
with  joy — a  perfect  Institutes  of  Quintilian,  only 
known  to  Italy  in  fragments.  Poggio  got  permission 
to  carry  it  to  Constance,  and  spent  fifty-three  days 
copying  it.  Their  net  took  other  smaller  fish.  Some 
books  of  Valerius,  Flaccus,  a  commentary  on  five 
speeches  of  Cicero,  Statius's  Woods,  a  book  of 
Manilius,  and  a  short  work  If  Priscian.  And  they 


130  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

copied  these  too.  But  it  was  the  news  of  the 
Quintilian  that  drew  from  Bruni,  soon  to  be  chosen 
as  the  worthiest  successor  of  Salutato  in  the  Chan- 
cellorship of  Florence,  the  answer,  "  O  vast  gain !  O 
unhoped-for  joy ! " 

Another  very  useful  man  in  this  book-collecting 
was  Giovanni  Aurispa,  not  much  of  a  scholar,  but  a 
skilful  buyer,particularly  of  Greek  manuscripts.  There 
was  great  excitement  in  Florence  when  he  landed  in 
Venice  with  two  hundred  and  thirty-eight  books  in 
his  chests.  To  pay  for  them  he  had  sold  all  he  had 
except  the  clothes  he  wore,  and  still  owed  fifty  florins 
for  freight  and  other  debts.  Cosimo's  brother  im- 
mediately advanced  the  money.  But  the  shrewd 
Aurispa  would  not  visit  Florence  till,  by  sending  an 
occasional  volume  and  an  imperfect  list  of  his  trea- 
sures, he  had  roused  the  appetite  of  the  literati  to 
fever-heat.  Then  he  doubtless  came  well  out  of  his 
speculation. 

What  these  men  and  their  patrons  were  doing  for 
the  writings  of  antiquity  Ciriaco  of  Ancona  did  for 
its  art.  Having  picked  up  Latin  while  clerk  of  har- 
bor repairs  in  his  native  city,  he  was  seized,  while  on 
a- visit  to  Rome,  by  the  passion  of  the  antiquary,  and 
gave  his  life  to  gratify  it.  Sailing  in  the  Levant  as 
supercargo,  he  bought  in  a  convent  a  manuscript  of 
the  Iliad  and  learned  Greek  out  of  it.  When  he 
came  to  Rome  to  visit  Pope  Eugenius  his  chests 
were  laden  with  interesting  things :  splendid  bronze 
vases  with  silver  inlay,  a  complete  Greek  manuscript 
of  the  New  Testament,  marble  heads,  cut  gems,  gold 
coins  of  Philip  and  Alexander,  Indian  water-cans  of 


Ciriacds  Travels.  131 

porcelain  decorated  in  gold,  and  a  long  list  of  copies 
of  ancient  inscriptions.  He  saw  and  was  seen  by  the 
literati  of  Rome,  and  went  to  Florence,  where  he 
settled  down  in  the  library  of  Niccoli  as  the  choicest 
spot  in  the  world.  But  he  never  stayed  long  in  any 
place.  He  visited  every  important  ruin  in  Italy 
merely  in  the  intervals  of  journeys  that  carried  him 
to  the  limits  of  travel.  He  went  to  the  pyramids, 
where  he  copied  an  inscription  in  an  unknown  tongue 
to  send  to  his  friend  Niccoli.  Then  he  turned  back, 
lingering,  and  longing  to  go  farther  up  the  mysterious 
river.  For  his  dearest  plans  always  failed.  At 
Damascus  he  was  very  anxious  to  accompany  the  son 
of  a  rich  merchant  to  Ethiopia  and  India,  but  could 
not.  He  was  also  obliged  to  give  up  a  trip  to  Persia 
with  a  Genoese  merchant  he  met  in  Adrianople. 
And  he  tried  in  vain  to  get  money  from  the  Pope 
and  Cosimo  for  a  visit  to  the  Atlas  Mountains  and 
the  Island  of  Thule  at  the  end  of  the  world.  But 
Cosimo  did  give  him  an  open  credit  at  the  Medici 
bank  to  invest  in  antiques.  And  Ciriaco  must  have 
spent  on  his  heavy  chests  more  than  he  earned,  for 
he  was  no  mere  trader,  but  loved  to  give  a  gold  coin 
of  Trojan  to  the  Emperor,  a  bit  of  amber  with  a 
fly  in  it  to  the  King  of  Naples,  drawings  of  temples 
and  copies  of  mosaics  to  his  friends.  He  was  full  of 
pomposity  and  conceit,  published  an  extraordinary 
prayer  made  to  Mercury  on  the  way  from  Delos  to 
Mycenae,  liked  to  tell  everywhere  how  he  once  mys- 
tified a  stupid  priest  by  the  saying,  "  My  art  is  to 
sometimes  waken  the  dead  from  the  grave,"  and  al- 
together took  himself  too  seriously.  So  they  laughed 


132  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

at  him  a  good  deal,  called  him  "  Resurrectionist " 
and  "  Mercury  of  Ancona  " ;  but  the  ablest  of  the 
brilliant  circle  of  which  he  loved  to  rank  himself  a 
member  knew  his  real  services  to  learning,  and  his 
lost  collections  of  carefully  copied  inscriptions  would 
doubtless  fill  many  a  gap  in  antiquarian  knowledge. 
These  collectors  and  the  patrons  whose  homes  shel- 
tered the  inheritance  of  the  past  were  surrounded  by 
a  swarm  of  teachers  and  writers,  and  the  wandering 
masters  found  more  dignified  successors  in  the  in- 
cumbents of  new  schools  founded  in  many  parts  of 
Italy.  The  greatest  of  this  generation  of  teachers 
are  Vittorino  da  Feltre  (1377—1446)  and  Guarino  da 
Verona  (1370—1460).  In  his  youth  Guarino  had  gone 
to  Constantinople  to  learn  Greek  of  Chrysoloras,  and 
when  he  was  called  to  Ferrara  as  tutor  to  the  princes 
of  the  royal  house  he  had  taught  in  many  cities  and 
was  sixty  years  old.  But,  old  as  he  was,  the  real  labor 
of  his  life,  that  was  to  make  his  name  gratefully  hon- 
ored throughout  Italy,  was  just  begun.  He  was  lec- 
turer on  poetry  to  the  University,  and  the  hearers 
who  soon  filled  the  room  included  men  as  well  as 
youth,  and  not  infrequently  women.  But  his  genius 
as  a  teacher  was  best  displayed  in  his  private  school. 
And  his  house  gathered  scholars  from  all  parts 
of  Italy,  Dalmatia,  Germany,  Hungary,  Bohemia, 
Poland,  France,  England,  and  the  islands  of  the 
Levant.  It  was  a  gentle  discipline,  that  of  the 
learned  and  kindly  man,  who  loved  a  joke  as  well  as 
the  wildest  lad  among  them.  The  pupils  were 
brought  up  with  his  own  sons,  who  all  grew  up  to  be 
scholars,  and  became  the  ancestors  of  a  numerous 


Vittorino  da  Feltrc.  133 

race  distinguished  for  ten  generations  in  poetry  and 
the  Humanities.  He  was  very  much  opposed  to  the 
use  of  the  rod,  saying  that  it  enslaved  boys  and  made 
them  hate  learning.  Nor  was  he  a  believer  in  "  the 
drilled  dull  lesson,  forced  down  word  for  word."  He 
taught  his  pupils  the  elements  of  grammar,  and  then 
threw  them  on  their  own  resources,  to  read  steadily 
and  continuously,  with  the  help  of  a  translation. 
This  method,  for  lack  of  which  generations  of  Ameri- 
can college  students  have  wasted  the  best  years  of 
their  lives  over  Greek  and  Latin  without  learning  to 
read  either  with  pleasure,  had  astonishing  success. 
There  are  recorded  instances  of  men,  young  and  old, 
who,  beginning  Greek,  could,  after  less  than  a  year 
in  Guarino's  house,  read  it  freely  and  with  pleasure. 
At  the  age  of  ninety  he  called  his  sons  around  him, 
blessed  them,  and  crowned  a  life  of  gentle  labor  with 
a  peaceful  death. 

Even  more  beautiful  is  the  personality  and  life  of 
Vittorino  da  Feltre.  His  parents  were  poor,  and  he 
had  to  help  himself  to  an  education  by  tutoring  and 
studying  at  the  same  time.  But  in  spite  of  his  hard 
work  he  was  more  than  a  mere  dig,  for  he  did  well 
in  the  sports  of  his  fellows  and  sang  the  praises  of  his 
sweetheart  in  Latin  and  Italian.  He  had  a  little 
school  at  Venice  for  a  while,  and  then  lectured  at 
Padua,  his  alma  mater,  in  rhetoric  and  philosophy. 
His  success  brought  him  a  call  to  Mantua  in  1423. 
The  Duke,  a  great  soldier,  but  a  friend  to  learning, 
had  built  for  an  academy  a  stately  house  in  the 
midst  of  a  green  meadow  on  the  bank  of  a  little  lake 
not  far  from  the  city.  It  was  generously  planned, 


1 34  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

for  the  halls  were  decorated  with  frescoes  and  the 
courts  with  fountains.  Here,  and  in  the  neighboring 
house  which  Vittorino  built  from  his  profits,  assembled 
a  strange  medley  of  pupils,  sons  of  princes  and 
noblemen  side  by  side  with  poor  scholars  Vittorino 
had  picked  up,  who  could  bring  nothing  but  their 
love  of  learning.  He  had  a  large  number  of  masters, 
including  teachers  of  painting  and  music,  riding, 
fencing,  and  ball-playing.  He  was  always  in  debt, 
for  he  never  could  resist  taking  promising  lads  who 
were  poor,  or  practise  economy  when  it  was  possible 
to  improve  his  school.  His  own  large  salary  he  gave 
away,  and  left  so  embarrassed  an  estate  that  his  heirs 
refused  to  accept  it.  But  he  had  a  ready  resource, 
for  his  noble  master  never  could  resist  the  smile  with 
which  Vittorino  was  wont  to  confess  that  he  had  spent 
several  hundred  gold  pieces  extra  for  the  needs  of 
the  school  and  hoped  it  would  be  supplied.  He 
himself  never  thought  of  money.  He  had  no  plea- 
sures except  those  he  shared  with  his  boys,  and  the 
only  thing  in  the  world  he  kept  to  himself  was  a  tiny 
house  and  garden  on  the  hill  where  Virgil  was  said 
to  have  been  born.  When  his  friends  advised  him 
to  marry  and  told  of  the  joys  of  the  family,  he 
pointed  to  his  scholars  and  said  he  had  children 
enough  already.  The  boys  were  brought  up  with 
freedom,  but  under  a  stern  law,  and  they  feared  his 
rebuke.  His  special  dislikes  were  lying,  profanity, 
laziness,  and  dandyism.  The  son  of  the  Duke,  al- 
most a  young  man,  blasphemed  on  the  ball-field, 
and  Vittorino  instantly  called  him  and  boxed  his 
ears.  His  piety  was  very  deep,  and  he  tau^fti  his 


The  School  at  Mantua.  135 

scholars  the  strict  observance  of  the  customs  of 
worship.  At  the  school  table  prayer  was  made  be- 
fore and  after  meat.  The  older  scholars  heard  mass 
every  morning,  went  to  confession  every  month,  and 
kept  honestly  all  the  prescribed  fasts  of  the  Church. 
But  the  asceticism  of  his  system  was  based  on  clas- 
sic rather  than  on  monkish  ideas,  and  endeavored 
to  subdue  the  body  by  training  it.  The  boys  had  to 
play  and  exercise  every  day  in  the  open  air  in  run- 
ning, wrestling,  swimming,  riding,  ball-playing,  or 
shooting  with  the  bow.  Sometimes  they  were  di- 
vided into  two  armies  which  fought  battles.  Some- 
times they  were  sent  hunting  or  fishing,  or,  in 
summer,  taken  on  long  tramps  to  the  Alps. 

He  never  wrote  anything,  saying  "  the  ancients 
had  written  enough ;  it  was  better  to  read  them  " — 
probably  only  his  excuse  to  himself  for  giving  his 
whole  learning  to  his  boys,  for  he  always  praised  and 
admired  the  writings  of  others.  He  had  his  reward 
in  the  tears  of  joy  that  were  seen  in  his  eyes  when 
one  did  well  in  the  crowning  exercise  of  the  school, 
an  elegant  rendering  of  Greek  into  Latin,  before 
visitors,  and  in  the  universal  love  and  respect  which 
came  to  him  from  all  men  in  an  envious  and  quarrel- 
some age.  The  best  medallist  of  the  day  gave  to  the 
medal  in  his  honor  this  legend :  "  Father  of  Classic 
Learning." 

Then  also  the  three  great  Florentines  around 
whom  we  grouped  the  first  generation  of  the  follow- 
ers of  Petrarch  in  the  ways  of  the  New  Learning 
found  worthy  successors  each  in  his  kind. 

Marsigli,  the  Augustinian  monk,  friend  of  Boccac- 


136  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

cio  and  Salutato,  is  represented  by  Traversari  the 
Camaldulensian.  Abroad  he  was  the  churchman, 
General  of  his  Order,  ambassador  of  the  Pope,  and 
powerful  advocate  of  the  Papal  authority  at  Basle. 
But  in  Florence  he  was  one  of  the  little  band  who  sat 
at  Cosimo's  table  for  a  feast  of  reason.  He  was  a 
sworn  friend  of  Niccoli,  who  was  forever  urging  him 
to  read  less  theology  and  more  classics.  When 
Niccoli  went  on  his  travels  he  always  left  to  Traver- 
sari the  keys  of  his  iron-bound  manuscript  chests, 
and  his  clothes,  which,  to  please  the  dandy  antiquary, 
had  to  be  shaken  and  brushed  at  regular  intervals  by 
a  brother  of  the  order.  He  had  a  hard  time  between 
the  rules  of  his  convent  and  his  taste  for  heathen  poets 
and  literary  distinction.  When  he  had  translated  for 
Cosimo  so  apparently  unsatanic  a  book  as  Diogenes 
Laertius's  Sketches  of  Distinguished  Philosophers,  he 
could  only  quiet  his  conscience  for  not  having  spent 
the  time  on  Church  fathers  with  the  reflection  that 
even  this  work  might  help  religion  by  its  moral  ex- 
amples. 

Leonardo  Bruni,  a  poor  orphan  boy  brought  up 
under  the  protection  of  Salutato,  became,  after  serv- 
ing as  curial  secretary,  a  worthy  successor  of  his 
patron  as  Chancellor  of  Florence.  He  was  accounted 
the  best  Grecian  of  his  day,  and  left  seventy-four 
works  in  Greek  and  Latin.  He  seemed,  as  he  strode 
majestically  through  the  streets  in  his  long  red 
robe,  one  of  those  ancient  Roman  worthies  whose 
tongue  he  wrote  so  clearly  and  beautifully  in  letters, 
or  rolled  out  in  the  strong  and  stately  phrases  of  his 
festal  orations.  He  was  third  of  an  illustrious  roll  of 


Poggio  BracciolinL  137 

chancellors,  which  numbers  between  Salutato  and 
Machiavelli  some  of  the  chief  names  in  the  literature 
of  successive  generations. 

But  it  is  in  Poggio  and  Filelfo  that  we  see  the 
typical  figure  of  the  Humanist,  the  successor  of 
Petrarch,  a  scholar  and  writer  living  by  his  knowledge 
and  his  pen,  not  directly  through  teaching  or  the  sale 
of  his  books,  but  by  the  presents  and  sinecures  offered 
by  admiring  patrons. 

Poggio  Bracciolini  (1380-1459)  walked  into  Flor- 
ence, like  Franklin  into  Philadelphia,  with  only  a  few 
pieces  of  silver  in  his  pocket.  But  he  soon  found  a 
friend  in  Salutato,  who  put  him  in  the  way  of  earning 
a  living  as  a  copyist  of  classical  manuscripts ;  and  his 
beautiful  handwriting  brought  him  plenty  of  work. 
Niccoli  lent  him  books  and  money,  and,  guided  by 
the  advice  of  both,  he  hammered  out  for  himself 
without  teachers  a  mastery  of  Latin  and  a  passable 
knowledge  of  Greek.  While  still  a  youth  he  got  a 
position  as  secretary  of  the  Papal  Curia,  which  he 
held  for  fifty  years.  But  his  heart  was  always  in 
Florence,  where  his  treasure  of  books  was,  either 
stored  in  his  little  villa,  or  under  the  care  of  his  friend 
Traversari.  There  he  married,  when  over  fifty,  a 
young  girl  of  eighteen,  a  match  which,  to  the  amaze- 
ment of  all  his  friends,  was  the  happiness  of  both. 
He  was  forty  before  the  discovery  of  the  Quintilian 
at  St.  Gall  brought  him  anything  like  fame,  and  it 
was  afterward  that  he  was  ranked  among  the  first 
scholars  and  stylists  of  his  day.  Poggio  did  not 
serve  Minerva  for  nothing.  He  wrote,  it  is  true, 
essays  on  "  Avarice  "  and  "  The  Greed  of  Gold,"  but 


138  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

both  as  curial  secretary  and  litterateur  he  understood 
perfectly  the  art  of  feathering  his  nest.  His  pride 
was  of  the  vulgar  stripe  which  keeps  constantly 
asking  for  something,  not  the  noble  self-respect  of  a 
Salutato,  which  is  always  content  with  its  wages  and 
stands  aside  to  watch,  half  in  scorn  and  half  in 
amusement,  the  universal  struggle  for  the  almighty 
dollar.  Until  the  time  when  he  gave  it  up  and  mar- 
ried he  was,  like  Petrarch,  a  patient  hunter  of  bene- 
fices, and  no  rich  patron  in  Italy  need  despair  of  the 
services  of  his  pen,  most  skilled  in  eulogy.  Nor  did 
he  scruple  to  skilfully  solicit  this  kind  of  business. 
When  he  had  translated  the  "  Cyropaedia  "  of  Xeno- 
phon  he  hinted  with  increasing  plainness  to  those  in 
the  court  of  Alfonso  of  Naples  his  desire  to  dedicate 
it  to  that  generous  Maecenas.  When  the  bait  was 
not  even  nibbled  at,  he  wrote  a  dedication  in  his 
warmest  tone  and  sent  a  splendidly  bound  copy  of 
the  work.  But  Alfonso  made  no  return  and  the  in- 
dignant scholar  began  to  hedge  violently  in  his  opin- 
ion of  the  King  whom  he  had  just  lauded  to  the  skies, 
questioned  his  taste  and  the  honesty  of  his  devotion 
to  literature,  and  struck  his  name  out  of  the  copies 
of  his  book  so  that  the  dedication  might  serve  for 
any  prince.  Then  Alfonso  sent  him  six  hundred 
florins,  and  begged  him  if  he  wanted  anything  else 
not  to  be  afraid  to  ask.  Immediately  the  tide  of 
Poggio's  admiration  swelled  to  high-water  mark,  and 
at  the  first  opportunity  he  sent  an  open  letter  beg- 
ging Alfonso  to  raise  all  Italy  against  the  Turk,  and 
calling  him  a  model  of  every  royal  virtue  in  peace 
and  war. 


Francesco  Filelfo.  139 

He  was  even  more  skilled  in  invective  than  in 
eulogy.  And  woe  betide  the  man  who  in  the  small- 
est way  crossed  Poggio's  path.  He  was  pilloried  in 
Latin  letters  whose  style  spread  them  all  over  Eu- 
rope. To  this  rule  Guarino  was  the  sole  exception. 
His  character  awed  even  the  pen  of  Poggio,  and 
their  dispute  as  to  whether  Caesar  or  Scipio  was  the 
greatest  man  was  carried  on,  if  not  with  all  the 
courtesy  of  an  old-fashioned  Village  debating  society, 
yet  with  what  for  Poggio  was  decency.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  defending  his  patron  Cosimo  against 
Filelfo  he  stopped  at  no  personality.  No  member 
of  his  adversary's  family  was  left  untouched  by  dirty 
accusations.  And  there  was  scarcely  a  crime  so 
mean  and  unmentionable  that  he  did  not  accuse  his 
opponent  of  it.  Some  allowance  must  be  made,  of 
course,  for  the  contemporary  customs  of  dispute. 
But  even  a  tough-skinned  generation  shrank  before 
the  poisoned  bitterness  of  Poggio's  darts. 

Francesco  Filelfo  (1398-1481),  when  he  landed  in 
Venice  in  1427,  had  served  for  five  years  as  secretary 
to  the  Emperor  John  in  Constantinople,  whither  he  had 
originally  been  sent  by  the  Venetian  State  as  secretary 
of  the  trade-house — a  sort  of  consul.  Two  years  later 
he  brought  his  chest  of  Greek  manuscripts  and  his 
beautiful  young  Greek  wife,  the  grand  niece  of  Manuel 
Chrysoloras,  to  Florence,  to  lecture  in  the  employ  of 
the  city  on  Cicero,  Livy,  Terence,  Homer,  Thucydides, 
and  Xenophon.  He  did  not  stay  long.  For  it  is  not  to 
be  supposed  that  continual  peace  brooded  over  the 
Florentine  garden  of  the  Muses.  Scholars  and  men 
of  letters  are  notoriously  difficult,  and  petty  jealousies 


140  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

and  quarrels  were  as  common  in  Florence  as  in  a 
modern  college  faculty.  Then  the  immeasurable 
vanity  of  Filelfo,  who  thought  the  street  curiosity 
that  stared  at  his  Eastern  beard  and  robe  a  tribute  to 
his  learning,  struck  like  flint  on  steel  against  the 
sarcastic  humor  of  Niccoli.  But  the  man  who  bore 
the  triple  reputation  of  one  of  the  first  Latinists,  the 
ablest  Greek  scholar,  and  the  most  skilful  poet  of 
Italy  had  no  trouble  in  finding  a  new  home.  He 
went  to  the  High  School  of  Siena,  and  the  war  of 
words  passed  to  knives;  for  after  Filelfo's  life  had 
twice  been  attempted  by  assassins,  hired,  as  he 
charged,  by  Cosimo  and  his  friends,  the  great  Grecian 
joined  with  other  exiles  of  the  "  noble  "  party  of 
Florentine  politics  to  hire  a  band  of  murderers  to  kill 
Cosimo  and  Marsuppini.  Filelfo  added  a  special 
promise  of  twenty-five  florins  for  the  death  of  Mar- 
suppini. But  the  assassin  was  caught,  had  both  of 
his  hands  cut  off,  and  was  driven  from  Florentine 
territory ;  and  it  was  decreed  that  if  Filelfo  were 
taken  he  should  have  his  tongue  cut  out.  Filelfo's 
answer  was  to  pillory  the  Medici  in  an  invective,  and 
Cosimo,  touched  by  the  only  spot  on  his  good  fame, 
sought  to  make  peace  through  Traversari ;  an  over- 
ture to  which  Filelfo  replied :  "  Cosimo  has  poison 
and  dagger  against  me.  I  have  brains  and  pen 
against  him.  I  do  not  want  his  friendship  and  I 
despise  his  hostility."  But  it  was  not  many  years 
before  he  again  sought  Cosimo's  patronage,  promis- 
ing to  destroy  all  his  invectives.  And  at  the  end  of 
his  life,  when  he  hoped  to  gain  from  Lorenzo,  Cosi- 
mo's .grandson  *  positfcyt  »*  *ko  ce?v  tuw^ersity  at 


Learned  Pagans.  141 

Pisa,  he  planned  a  great  eulogy  of  the  Medici  in  ten 
books,  of  which  he  sent  a  flattering  preface  as  a  sample. 
And  at  eighty-three  years  he  was  actually  recalled 
to  Florence,  to  die  almost  on  reaching  it.  Mean- 
while he  had  not  suffered.  He  was  always  com- 
plaining of  poverty,  even  when  he  had  six  servants 
or  kept  six  horses  and  dressed  in  silk  and  fine  furs. 
And  his  measureless  importunity  supported  this 
state.  For  it  was  actually  the  belief  of  the  age  that 
the  key  of  the  heaven  of  fame  was  the  pen  of  the 
Humanist,  and  the  sale  of  their  eulogies  has  been 
well  compared  to  the  sale  of  indulgences  by  the 
Church.  We  have  seen  how  even  Cosimo  feared  to 
have  his  name  mentioned  with  disrespect  in  Filelfo's 
immortal  letters,  and  to  obtain  honorable  mention  in 
them  many  a  prince  was  willing  to  fill  his  hands  with 
gold. 

For  the  rest  Filelfo  and  Poggio  were  pretty  thor- 
ough heathen.  They  did  not  quarrel  with  the 
Church,  for  it  was  dangerous.  The  very  fury  with 
which  Petrarch,  Boccaccio,  and  Salutato  had  attacked 
ecclesiastical  abuses  showed  their  love  of  the  Church. 
But  Filelfo  and  Poggio  did  little  else  but  sneer  at 
her  wrongs  and  weaknesses.  A  Bruni,  a  Niccoli,  a 
Guarino,  a  Vittorino  showed  by  their  attitude  toward 
her  worship  their  faith  in  the  great  institution  which 
handed  down  the  teaching  of  Christ.  But  these  two 
most  typical  Humanists,  who  sought  the  glory  of 
men  through  the  glory  of  letters,  and  lived  by  pat- 
ronage, lo.oked  upon  the  priests  as  Cicero  on  the 
augurs.  They  dropped  altogether  the  sense  of  sin 
which  Jesus  of  Nazareth  brought  into  the  world,  and 


142  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

when  they  thus  turned  to  the  Greek  ideal  they  did 
not  replace  the  penitence  issuing  in  the  love  of  God 
and  man  of  his  doctrine  by  the  stoic  self-respect 
which  had  produced  an  Epictetus  and  taught  Marcus 
Aurelius  to  write  that  "  even  in  a  palace  life  might 
be  well  lived."  A  few  of  their  successors  in  the 
New  Learning  put  on  the  simple  garb  of  that  philos- 
ophy. But  the  typical  Humanists  of  this  genera- 
tion, with  most  of  their  successors,  set  up  nothing 
in  place  of  what  they  abandoned,  and,  borrowing 
one  of  the  worst  traits  of  classic  life,  stamped  with 
the  authority  of  culture  and  good  taste  those  vices 
which  constantly  threaten  to  rot  society  to  the  point 
of  dissolution.  Filelfo's  "  De  Jocis  et  Seriis  "  has 
never  been  printed.  His  biographer  (Rosmini,  1808) 
was  ashamed  to  quote  it  because  of  its  "  horrible 
obscenity."  Poggio  tells  how  a  knot  of  choice  spirits 
among  the  Papal  secretaries,  all  of  whom  belonged  to 
the  clergy,  used  to  meet  after  work  in  a  remote  room 
of  the  palace.  They  called  their  informal  society 
"  Bugiale,"  or  "  The  Forge  of  Lies,"  and  he  collected 
and  published  the  tales  he  heard  there  under  the  title 
of  "  Facetiae."  It  went  through  twenty-six  editions 
in  sixty  years.  Any  one  attempting  to  circulate  an 
English  translation  through  the  United  States  mail 
could  be  sent  to  the  penitentiary.  Nor  was  this  all. 
The  worship  of  lubricity  became  deliberate.  In 
Valla's  dialogue,  "  De  Voluptate,"  while  the  formal 
victory  remains  with  virtue,  the  freshness  and  strength 
of  argument  are  all  on  the  side  of  the  Greek  view; 
and  the  conclusion,  "Whatever  pleases  is  permitted," 
lies  near  to  every  reader. 


The  Goddess  of  Lubricity.  143 

ButinBeccadelli's  "Hermaphroditus,"  by  which  the 
author  won  instant  fame  at  the  age  of  thirty-one,  the 
astonished  modern  reader  finds  a  veritable  Priapean 
orgy.  The  polished  Latin  verses,  decorated  with  all 
the  skill  of  a  poet  and  rhetorician,  have  for  their  sub- 
ject those  things  which  St.  Paul  says  it  is  a  shame 
even  to  speak  of.  It  was  received  with  a  perfect 
storm  of  applause,  and  gained  for  Beccadelli  the 
laurel  crown  of  a  poet  from  the  hand  of  the  Emperor 
Sigismund.  Not,  of  course,  without  protest.  For 
the  leading  folks'  preachers,  Bernardino  of  Siena  and 
his  associates  the  Franciscans,  thundered  against  it 
and  publicly  burned  it  with  the  picture  of  the  author 
in  the  market  squares  of  Bologna,  Ferrara,  and  Milan, 
while  the  Pope  excommunicated  any  who  should 
dare  to  read  it.  But  the  more  it  was  attacked  the 
more  it  was  read.  And  though  in  later  life  the 
author  mildly  expressed  his  regret,  it  was  the  chief 
support  of  his  fame.  The  claim  of  apologetes  that 
Christianity  has  obliterated  that  shame  of  the  classic 
world  has  never  been  justified  by  facts  in  this  or  any 
other  age.  But  it  is  certainly  a  sign  of  additional 
corruption  to  find  a  crime,  now  stamped  as  infamous 
by  every  statute-book  of  Europe,  and  then  punished 
by  death  in  France,  openly  praised  with  more  than 
Turkish  cynicism  amid  the  applause  of  men  who 
assumed  to  lead  taste  and  learning. 

The  Laurentius  Valla  alluded  to  was  born  twenty- 
seven  years  later  than  Poggio,  and  together  with 
Beccadelli  formed  the  chief  ornament  of  the  cultured 
court  of  Alfonso  of  Naples.  He  became  one  of  the 
ablest  critics  the  world  has  ever  seen.  It  was  dim"- 


144  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

cult  for  any  mythical  humbug  or  traditional  fraud  to 
escape  his  sharp  eye  and  tongue.  When  Beccadelli 
showed  King  A  Ifonso  the  skull  of  a  dragon,  Vallaproved 
that  it  was  nothing  but  a  crocodile.  No  adherent  of 
the  New  Learning  had  yet  struck  such  resistless  blows 
at  the  traditional  methods  of  scholasticism,  which  en- 
slaved so  much  of  the  teaching  at  the  universities 
and  schools.  Though  it  was  two  generations  since 
the  death  of  Petrarch  he  made  the  beginnings  of  a 
scientific  Latin  grammar  and  syntax.  He  denied 
the  right  of  the  monks  and  nuns  to  their  exclusive 
title  "  religious,"  and  the  claim  on  which  it  was 
based,  that  an  honest  monk  could  expect  a  higher 
reward  from  God,  simply  because  of  his  monkish 
vow,  than  an  honest  layman.  He  exposed  as  a 
forgery  the  letter  of  Abgar,  King  of  Edessa,  to 
Christ,  mistakenly  quoted  by  Eusebius  as  an  original. 
He  attacked  the  catechism  of  the  Franciscans  as  false 
because  it  said  that  the  Apostles  had  in  person  com- 
posed the  different  articles  of  the  so-called  Apostles' 
Creed.  He  demanded  that  the  Vulgate,  or  Jerome's 
Latin  translation  of  the  New  Testament,  should  be 
compared  with  the  original  Greek  and  corrected.1 
These  assertions  are  commonplaces  now.  They  re- 
quired the  originality  of  genius  then.  But  in  the 
moral  courage  to  sustain  his  originality  Valla  was 
absolutely  deficient.  When  he  was  summoned  before 
an  ecclesiastical  court  and  confronted  with  a  charge 
of  heresy  he  escaped  by  saying  that  "  Mother  Church 

1  The  manuscript  containing  this  demand  was  never  published  until 
Erasmus  found  it  in  Belgium  and  had  it  printed  in  1505. 


The  New  Learning  and  Reformation.   145 

did  not  know  anything  about  it,  but  nevertheless  he 
thought  in  these  matters  entirely  as  Mother  Church." 
And  when  he  wanted  a  sinecure  on  the  staff  of  Papal 
secretaries  his  letter  to  the  Pope  humbly  retracted 
every  conclusion  of  his  scholarship  and  promised 
hereafter  to  write  entirely  in  his  interests. 

It  has  seemed  necessary  to  interrupt  the  account 
of  the  attempted  reform  of  the  Church  in  head  and 
members  by  the  three  parties  of  the  radicals  (Wicliff 
and  Huss),  the  middle  party  of  conciliar  reform 
(Gerson,  d'Ailly,  and  the  fathers  of  Basle),  and  the 
orthodox,  ascetic  folks'  preachers  (Catherine  of  Siena, 
Bernardino  of  Siena,  etc.)  by  this  long  account  of  the 
second  generation  of  the  men  of  the  New  Learning, 
because  the  success  of  their  movement  finally  brought 
about  the  end  of  the  drama  in  the  triumph  of  reform. 
Neither  the  protesting  Reformation  of  Luther  nor  the 
Catholic  Counter-reformation  of  Trent  would  have 
been  possible  but  for  the  victory  of  the  New  Learning 
over  the  traditions  of  scholasticism.  And  curiously 
enough  this  relation,  which  it  might  be  tedious  to  de- 
monstrate abstractly,  has  been  clearly  suggested  in  a 
letter  from  one  of  the  Humanists  we  have  described. 

Petrarch,  the  founder  of  the  New  Learning,  did 
three  things  :  he  tested  tradition  by  reason  ;  he  awoke 
self-consciousness — made  man  cease  to  be  a  member 
of  a  class  and  an  institution  to  become  an  indepen- 
dent personality ;  and  he  evoked  the  historical  sense 
and  turned  it  to  study  the  records  of  the  past.  We 
have  seen  that  John  Huss,  appealing  from  the 
Council  to  Christ,  died  for  the  dignity  and  indepen- 


146  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

dence  of  the  individual  soul,  in  defence  of  the  truth 
that  Christianity  is  in  the  last  analysis  a  personal 
matter  between  each  disciple  and  his  Master.  And 
Jerome  died  because  he  stood  by  Huss.  Poggio,  that 
careless  Gallic  who  cared  for  none  of  these  things, 
wrote,  among  the  letters  from  Constance  about  his 
book-hunts,  one  to  Bruni,  describing  the  trial  and 
death  of  Jerome.  And  the  unheroic  Humanist,  not 
himself  the  stuff  that  makes  martyrs,  cannot  conceal 
his  intellectual  sympathy  for  the  man  who  stood  in 
the  name  of  reason  and  conscience  against  Council 
and  Emperor,  the  combined  traditional  authority  of 
Church  and  State.  The  letter  is  so  characteristic  of 
one  type  of  Humanist,  and  so  illustrative  of  the  secret 
and  unseen  interaction  of  the  forces  of  history,  that 
it  seems  wise  to  give  the  reader  a  free  and  condensed 
but  true  translation,  one  third  the  length  of  the 
original. 

"  Poggio  sends  his  best  greetings  to  Leonardo. 
When  I  had  been  several  days  at  the  baths  I  wrote 
to  our  friend  Nicolas  a  letter  which  I  hoped  you 
would  read.  Then  when  I  had  returned  to  Constance 
the  case  of  Jerome  was  under  discussion.  I  confess 
I  have  never  seen  any  one  who  approached  more 
nearly  to  the  much-admired  eloquence  of  the  ancients. 
The  diction,  the  skill,  the  arguments,  the  expressive 
countenance,  the  confidence  with  which  he  an- 
swered his  adversaries  were  wonderful.  And  it  is  a 
pity  that  so  noble  an  intellect  should  have  turned  to 
heresy,  if,  indeed,  those  things  are  true  of  which  he 
is  charged.  Nor,  indeed,  is  it  my  business  to  decide 
so  great  a  question.  I  yield  to  the  judgment  of 


Poggios  Letter  to  Leonardo.  147 

those  who  are  accounted  wiser.  It  would  take  too 
long  to  give  you  an  account  of  the  whole  affair,  but 
I  will  touch  on  some  of  its  more  remarkable  features. 
"  The  charges  were  read  from  the  pulpit,  head 
after  head,  and  he  was  given  an  opportunity  to  de- 
fend himself.  It  is  impossible  to  tell  you  how  calmly 
he  answered  and  how  skilfully  he  defended  himself. 
Nothing  came  from  his  lips  unworthy  of  a  good  man. 
His  answer  to  some  was  a  witty  saying,  to  others  a 
sarcasm;  he  compelled  many  in  the  midst  of  this 
sorrowful  affair  to  laughter,  returning  their  fierce 
interruptions  with  a  joke.  To  a  Dominican  crying 
out  bitterly  against  him  he  replied,  '  Be  silent,  hypo- 
crite.' To  another  swearing  by  his  conscience, 
'That/  he  said,  'is  the  surest  way  to  deceive.'  A 
certain  chief  among  his  adversaries  he  never  ad- 
dressed save  as  ass  or  dog.  When  at  last,  on  the 
third  day,  he  was  given  permission  to  speak  at  length, 
he  began  with  praying  God  to  grant  him  such  a 
mind  and  skill  in  speaking  as  should  be  for  the  gain 
and  salvation  of  his  soul.  Then  he  pointed  out  that 
many  excellent  men,  overwhelmed  by  false  witnesses, 
have  been  condemn  d  by  unjust  judgment;  referring 
to  Socrates,  unjustly  killed,  the  captivity  of  Plato, 
the  flight  of  Anaxagoras,  the  torture  of  Zeno,  the 
exile  of  Rutilius,  the  death  of  Boethius,  and  others. 
Then  he  passed  over  to  the  history  of  the  Hebrews ; 
spoke  of  Moses,  Joseph,  Isaiah,  Daniel,  and  almost 
all  the  prophets,  oppressed  by  unjust  judgment  as 
despisers  of  the  gods  and  seducers  of  the  people. 
Coming  down  to  John  the  Baptist,  our  Lord,  and  all 
the  Apostles,  he  showed  that  they  died  by  false 


148  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

accusation  as  evil-doers.  His  voice  was  sweet,  full, 
and  resonant.  There  was  great  dignity  in  his  ges- 
tures either  to  express  indignation  or  to  excite  pity, 
although  he  did  not  ask  pity.  He  stood  intrepid 
and  unflinching,  not  only  despising  death,  but  even 
seeking  it.  You  might  have  called  him  a  second 
Cato — a  man  worthy  of  eternal  memory  among  men 
(I  do  not  praise  anything  in  him  contrary  to  the  in- 
stitutions of  the  Church).  Obstinate  in  his  errors,  he 
was  condemned  as  a  heretic  and  burned.  He  ap- 
proached death  with  a  pleasant  and  smiling  coun- 
tenance. But  this  was  a  particular  sign  of  a  steadfast 
mind.  When  the  executioner  would  have  started 
the  fire  behind,  that  he  might  not  see  it, '  Come  here, 
he  said,  '  and  light  the  fire  in  front.  If  I  were  afraid 
of  it  I  would  never  have  come  to  this  place,  which  I 
could  have  escaped.'  I  saw  this  ending  and  watched 
each  act  of  this  drama.  And  having  leisure  I  wished 
to  tell  you  this  affair  a  little  like  the  stories  of  the 
worthies  of  antiquity.  For  not  Mutius  himself  suf- 
fered his  hand  to  be  burned  with  so  steadfast  a  spirit 
as  he  the  whole  body.  Nor  did  Socrates  drink  the 
poison  so  willingly  as  he  endured  the  fire.  Farewell, 
my  dearest  Leonardo." 


PERIOD  li. 

FROM  THE  ACCESSION  OF  THE  FIRST  HUMAN- 
IST POPE  TO  THE  FRENCH  INVASION  OF 
ITALY  (1447-94). 


PERIOD  II. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

NICHOLAS  V.,  THE  FIRST  HUMANIST  POPE,  MAKES 
ROME  THE  HOME  OF  THE  MUSES — THE  WAR 
OF  THE  MONKS  AND  THE  HUMANISTS. 

|HE  death  of  Eugenius  in  1447  left  the 
Church  in  the  care  of  a  strong  and  repre- 
sentative body  of  cardinals — eleven  Ital- 
ians, four  Spaniards,  two  Greeks,  a  Ger- 
man, an  Englishman,  a  Pole,  a  Hungarian, 
a  Portuguese,  and  two  Frenchmen.  After  a  short 
conclave  they  elected,  to  his  own  great  astonishment, 
the  youngest,  but  one  of  the  ablest  of  their  number, 
Tommaso  Parentucelli,  of  Sarzana,  Cardinal  of  Bo- 
logna, who  took  the  title  of  Nicholas  V.  There  was 
no  churchman  who  represented  more  unmistakably 
the  training  and  ideals  of  the  New  Learning.  After 
attaining  a  master's  degree  at  Bologna  in  philosophy 
and  the  liberal  arts,  he  lived  for  several  years  in 
Florence  as  tutor  in  the  houses  of  the  Albizzi  and 
Strozzi,  and  breathed  deep  the  air  of  the  New  Learn- 
ing that  filled  the  homes  of  their  friends.  A  further 
course  of  study  gained  a  degree  in  theology,  and 
he  became  for  twenty  years  the  friend  and  helper 
of  the  Bishop  of  Bologna,  one  of  the  most  faithful 


152  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

prelates  of  his  day,  whose  character  earned  the  red 
hat  and  nominated  him  to  important  legations.  On 
these  missions  Tommaso  added  the  culture  of  travel, 
distinguished  conversation,  and  the  conduct  of  great 
affairs  to  the  culture  of  books,  and  acquired  such- 
readiness  that  he  talked  on  any  subject  as  if  he  had 
given  his  whole  life  to  its  study.  After  he  was  made 
a  cardinal  for  closing  the  negotiations  which  brought 
rebellious  Germany  to  the  bedside  of  the  dying 
Eugenius,  he  had  been  called  the  "  Second  Pope," 
and  his  election  was  "hailed  with  joy. 

He  was  a  little  man  of  choleric  temper,  with  con- 
siderable power  of  self-control  in  emergencies,  but 
quick  and  impatient  at  small  carelessness  or  stupidity. 
He  disliked  ceremony  intensely  so  far  as  personal  in- 
tercourse was  concerned,  and  his  manners  were  pleas- 
ant and  friendly.  His  conversation  was  always  frank 
and  often  merry.  He  never  forgot  old  friends.  And 
his  old  friends  at  Florence  sent  a  great  embassy  with 
a  hundred  and  twenty  horses  to  congratulate  the  new 
Pope.  Among  them  was  the  bookseller  Vespasiano 
da  Bisticci,  and  to  him  Nicholas  confided  his  ideal: 
"  So  long  as  I  am  Pope  to  use  no  weapon  but  that 
which  Christ  has  given  for  my  defence,  his  Holy 
Cross."  For  this  the  first  Pope  under  whom  Chris- 
tendom had  been  united  for  seventy  years  was  sin- 
cerely resolved  to  do  his  duty  as  he  understood  it. 
His  understanding  was  that  of  a  pious  Humanist 
whose  dearest  wish,  next  to  the  establishment  of  the 
peace  of  the  Church,  was  to  ennoble  religion  and 
worship  by  the  services  of  literature  and  art.  He 
did  this  with  a  zeal  born  of  the  pleasure  in  being 


Nicholas  the  Book  Collector.          153 

connoisseur  and  patron,  which  was  his  strongest  and 
most  active  passion. 

During  the  many  years  when  he  had  accomplished 
with  dignity  the  hard  task  of  living  as  a  poor  man 
among  intimates  whose  wealth  gave  wide  range  to 
their  cultured  tastes,  he  had  been  distinguished  for 
his  beautifully  written  and  bound  manuscripts,  and 
was  wont  to  say  in  familiar  moments,  "  If  I  were  rich 
I  would  indulge  in  two  extravagances — building  and 
the  collection  of  books."  The  literati  of  Florence 
were  accustomed  to  gather  every  morning  at  a  cer- 
tain corner  in  front  of  the  palace  of  the  Republic,  to 
discuss  the  literary  and  other  gossip  of  the  day.  And 
after  he  had  done  his  duty  of  waiting  on  his  master, 
the  Archbishop,  Maestro  Tommaso  would  ride  down 
the  street  clad  in  his  blue  gown,  give  his  mule  to  the 
two  servants  who  followed  him  on  foot,  and  join  the 
group.  Whenever  the  subject  of  the  arrangement  of 
a  library  was  suggested  among  them,  his  opinion  was 
received  as  that  of  a  leading  expert.  His  plan  for  a 
library,  made  for  Cosimo  de'  Medici's  foundation  of 
San  Marco,  was  used  by  almost  all  those  large-minded 
patrons  who  followed  that  new  example  by  founding 
public  libraries.  It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  as 
Pope  he  should  collect  the  scattered  manuscripts  that 
were  in  the  Papal  buildings  and  become  the  real 
founder  of  the  Vatican  library.  His  agents  were 
seeking  manuscripts  in  all  likely  places,  and  he  offered 
the  enormous  reward  of  five  thousand  florins  for  a 
copy  of  the  Hebrew  Gospel  of  Matthew.  His  chief 
delight  was  to  handle  and  arrange  these  volumes,  and 
his  particular  favorites  were  magnificently  bound  in 


154  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

crimson  velvet  with  silver  clasps.  They  included  the 
presentation  copies  of  the  translations  from  the  Greek 
he  suggested  and  nobly  rewarded.  He  delighted  to 
be  hailed  as  a  new  Maecenas  by  the  wandering 
knight-errants  of  learning,  who  were  rinding  that  the 
pen  was  as  mighty  as  the  sword  to  win  fortune  for 
the  skilful  wielder  of  it.  The  Curia  was  almost 
swamped  by  the  swarm  of  secretaries  who  wore  the 
livery  of  the  Church,  but  loved  the  shrine  of  the 
Muses.  As  Nicholas  pathetically  remarked  when  he 
was  accused  of  neglecting  some  modest  talent 
unknown  at  his  very  doors,  "  Why,  I  reward  even 
the  bad  poets,  if  they  only  come  and  ask." 

Many  of  these  secretaries  of  Nicholas  were  heathen. 
Not  that  they  attacked  the  truths  of  Christianity  or 
refused  the  offices  of  the  Church,  but  that  the  ideals 
of  the  New  Testament  had  little  influence  over  their 
thoughts,  desires,  or  conversation,  and  the  classic 
authors  a  great  deal.  It  was  a  rationalistic  circle, 
much  more  interested  in  the  relation  of  human 
thought  and  feeling  to  the  world  than  in  the  relation 
of  the  soul  to  God,  secretly  given  to  free  thought, 
and  more  or  less  openly  to  free  living.  They  dis- 
played a  respect  for  the  Church  as  a  great  institution 
of  society ;  and  doubtless  they  tried  to  preserve  such 
a  measure  of  regard  for  religion  in  their  hearts  as 
might  be  a  comfort  at  death,  without  being  too 
troublesome  while  they  were  engaged  in  living. 

Both  their  heathenism  and  the  form  of  their  Chris- 
tianity led  this  circle  and  their  correspondents  to  take 
up  the  invective  against  the  monks  which  two  gen-, 
erations  of  Humanists  had  carried  on.  Petrarch, 


An  Old  Quarrel.  155 

indeed,  had  been  on  very  good  terms  with  all  the 
orders  of  monks,  and  was  pleased  with  their  praise 
of  his  book  "  On  the  Solitary  Life."  But  Boccaccio 
not  only  made  monks  the  comic  heroes  of  the  very 
worst  of  his  tales,  but  wrote  against  them  as  ambi- 
tious pretenders  who  opposed  learning  and  dishonored 
the  house  of  God.  In  the  second  generation  Bruni, 
the  Chancellor  of  Florence,  took  up  the  conflict  in 
his  tractate  "  Against  Hypocrisy,"  and  draws  such  a 
picture  that  there  is  little  difficulty  in  recognizing  a 
caricature  of  the  Franciscan  Brothers  of  the  Strict 
Observance,  the  begging  friars,  with  their  distin- 
guished folks'  preacher,  Bernardino  of  Siena.  Filelfo 
^continued  the  attack,  and  gives  a  satiric  picture  of 
the  preaching  of  the  revivalist  monks. 

Poggio  was  therefore  taking  up  the  quarrel  of  his  class 
in  his  lifelong  enmity  against  the  Strict  Franciscans. 
And  there  was  added  the  hatred  of  a  curialist  of  the  op- 
position party,  who  had  felt  the  pressure  of  their 
overwhelming  influence  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
administration  of  Eugenius  IV.  His  letters  and 
pamphlets  against  them  are  written  in  his  most  bril- 
liant and  reckless  style.  He  says  they  are  recruited 
among  idle  boys,  who,  having  learned  nothing  and 
being  too  lazy  to  earn  their  living,  go  into  the  order 
to  live  without  working.  They  put  on  a  coarse  and 
dirty  gown,  hang  down  their  heads,  look  pale  and 
thin,  and  think  they  have  proved  their  holiness  and 
humility,  but  are  leading  astray  silly  women,  con- 
stantly begging  privileges  and  immunities  for  their 
order,  and  hunting  bishoprics  and  cardinals'  hats  for 
themselves.  Since  Bernardino  has  won  such  ap- 


156  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

plause,  every  stupid  idiot  in  the  order  wants  to  imi- 
tate him.  They  scream  and  whisper,  stamp  and 
pound  the  pulpit,  and  in  the  end  are  bathed  in  per- 
spiration, while  their  hearers  remain  stupider  than 
before.  "  Why,"  he  asks,  "  do  they  always  call  the 
Redeemer  Jesus,  and  not,  as  other  people  do,  Jesus 
Christ?  Why  do  they  call  themselves  Jesusites 
[Jesuits]  and  not,  like  others,  Christians  ?  It  is  because 
they  want,  by  this  trick  of  a  new  fashion  of  speech, 
to  appear  to  be  a  chosen  and  peculiar  band,  but  really 
they  are  filled  with  ambitions  and  all  uncleanness." 

That  such  bitter  attacks  did  not  mean  separation 
from  the  Church,  or  even  war  with  all  monks,  is 
illuminating  for  those  Protestant  readers,  who  fin<4 
it  difficult  to  understand  that,  within  certain  fixed 
limits  of  doctrine  and  certain  practical  rules  of  obe- 
dience, the  liveliest  discussion  and  the  freest  per- 
sonal criticism  have  always  been  possible  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  Poggio  himself  had  intimate 
friends  among  the  monks.  His  eldest  son,  though 
to  his  father's  great  grief,  became  a  preacher  of  the 
strictest  order  of  St.  Francis.  He  signed  his  will  in 
the  cloister  of  San  Croce,  desired  to  be  buried  there, 
and  left  money  to  furnish  a  new  chapel  and  for  a 
hundred  masses  to  be  said  by  the  monks  for  his  soul. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  monks  were  si- 
lent under  such  attacks.  We  have  seen  how  Bernar- 
dino denounced  Beccadelli;  and  a  score  of  pulpits 
thundered  in  reply  to  Poggio  against  the  immorali- 
ties and  indecencies  of  the  Humanist  writings,  charg- 
ing that  darker  heathenism  and  heresy,  denials  of 
God  and  the  soul,  were  behind. 


Halting  between  Two  Opinions.        157 

One  strange  outcome  of  this  conflict  between  those 
who  quoted  the  classics  and  practised  worldliness, 
and  those  who  quoted  the  New  Testament  and  prac- 
tised other  worldliness,  was  the  appearance  of  men 
who  sympathized  with  both  and  spent  their  lives 
halting  between  two  opinions.  Such  a  one  was 
Girolamo  Agliotti,  of  the  Benedictine  cloister  of 
Arezzo,  in  whom  the  Zeitgeist  was  so  powerful  that 
when  he  heard  the  "  Gospel  of  Christ  or  the  letters 
of  Paul  or  Augustine  read,  felt  them  so  little  that  he 
was  inclined  to  doubt  whether  there  ever  had  been 
a  Paul  or  a  Christ  or  an  Augustine."  "  He  was  much 
more  stirred  by  Virgil  than  by  the  Psalms,  and  pre- 
ferred Livy  and  Quintilian  to  Ezekiel."  In  this 
desperate  condition  he  met  Traversari,  the  Human- 
istic General  of  the  Camaldolites,  and  his  sympathy 
allayed  the  strife  of  the  boy's  spirit  and  gave  him 
peace  in  the  resolve  to  take  the  dress  of  his  order. 
But  his  fellows  regarded  the  study  of  anything  but 
the  Bible  and  the  lives  of  the  saints  as  worse  than  a 
waste  of  time  for  a  monk,  and  he  was  sent  out  of  the 
cloister  by  his  abbot.  He  spent  his  years  in  project- 
ing books  for  which  he  could  never  find  a  patron; 
wrote  one  on  the  "  Education  of  a  Monk,"  but  seems 
to  have  pleased  neither  party ;  and,  though  the  Pope 
finally  gave  him  the  abbacy  of  the  little  cloister  from 
which  he  had  been  driven,  he  made  no  career  com- 
mensurable with  his  ambitions  or  even  his  talents. 

But  Alberto  da  Sarteano,  a  begging  friar  who 
brought  the  fruits  of  classic  learning  to  his  order, 
found  better  service  and  reward.  He  was  the  most 
distinguished  disciple  and  successor  of  Bernardino, 


158  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

their  great  preacher.  He  had  spent  some  time  in  his 
youth  in  Florence,  and  was  a  friend  of  the  circle  of 
literati  centred  about  Niccoli.  Thence  he  went  to 
the  great  schoolmaster  Guarino  to  perfect  himself  in 
Greek  and  Latin  eloquence.  They  became  sworn 
friends.  When  the  monk,  a  year  later,  preached  at 
a  provincial  assembly  of  his  order  in  Latin  sprinkled 
with  his  new  Greek,  the  teacher,  always  pleased  with 
his  pupils'  efforts,  was  delighted.  Alberto  soon  laid 
aside  his  Latin  and  his  oratory  to  learn  the  art  by 
which  Bernardino  roused  the  common  people  to 
great  crises  of  religious  excitement  and  enthusiasm. 
Henceforth  he  became  a  pillar  of  his  order.  But  in 
the  midst  of  his  "  trumpet  preaching  "  he  was  still 
willing,  as  his  old  master  wrote  with  joy,  to  exhort 
his  hearers  to  the  duty  of  study,  and  to  support  the 
truths  of  religion  not  only  by  quotation  from  the 
Bible,  but  also  from  the  orators  and  poets.  No 
doubt  this  roused  criticism  and  suspicion,  just  as 
Wesley's  habit  of  reading  Shakespeare  did  three  cen- 
turies later.  But  in  so  distinguished  and  zealous  a 
servant  of  the  strictest  observance  of  the  order, 
things  could  be  pardoned  that  would  have  been  un- 
bearable scandal  in  a  weaker  vessel.  He  was  even 
able  to  maintain,  in  spite  of  one  or  two  half-playful 
controversies,  a  friendly  correspondence  with  Poggio. 
And  on  his  mission  journeys  the  monk  was  keeping 
a  sharp  and  sometimes  successful  outlook  for  rare 
books  on  behalf  of  the  very  Humanist  who  was 
pouring  out  the  vials  of  his  bitterest  satire  on  the 
barefoot  preachers. 

Coming  events  cast  their  shadows  before,  and  such 


Nicholas  the  Patron  of  Art.  159 

a  figure  was  a  prophecy  of  those  Jesusites  (Jesuits) 
who  a  century  later,  leading  the  Catholic  Counter- 
reformation  by  polished  preaching  to  the  higher 
classes  and  the  creation  of  a  new  system  of  Catho- 
lic education,  prepared  novices  for  entrance  into  their 
order  by  a  long  and  laborious  training  in  every  de- 
partment of  classic  and  philosophic  learning. 

Nicholas  spent  large  sums  in  filling  his  court 
with  Humanists,  replacing  by  them  the  monks,  the 
traditional  servants  of  the  Papacy.  But  it  was  in  the 
arts  that  he  used  the  bulk  of  those  huge  treasures 
which  were  raising  the  Church  from  the  poverty  of 
the  schism.  We  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  stream  flow- 
ing quietly  from  all  parts  of  the  world  in  the  flood  of 
gold  poured  out  before  the  altar  of  St.  Peter  by  the 
thronging  jubilee  pilgrims  of  1450 — a  sum  so  great 
that  it  amazed  all  beholders.  The  shops  of  the  gold- 
smiths as  far  as  Paris  were  filled  with  orders  for  the 
Papal  court,  and  the  ceremonials  gleamed  with 
wrought  metal  and  precious  stones,  fine  fabrics, 
splendid  tapestries  and  embroideries.  He  bade 
painters  cover  the  walls  of  the  Vatican  with  frescoes, 
and  was  fortunate  in  the  service  of  Fra  Angelico; 
whose  epitaph  bids*  the  passer-by  praise  him,  not 
because  he  was  a  second  Apelles,  but  because  he 
gave  all  the  rewards  of  his  work  to  Christ's  poor. 
The  restless  energy  of  Nicholas  turned  to  every  kind 
of  building.  The  aqueduct  was  repaired  and  the 
fountains  of  the  city  increased  and  adorned ;  new 
bridges  were  built  and  old  ones  put  in  order.  The 
walls  were  completed  and  made  defensible,  and  new 
fortifications  rose  in  the  weaker  cities  of  the  patrimo- 


160  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

nium.  The  palace  of  the  senators  was  enlarged  and 
adorned,  and  a  new  one  built  for  the  magistrates. 
The  ruined  churches  and  basilicas  were  restored. 
For  that  part  of  the  city  which  was  called  the  Leo- 
nina,  and  centred  in  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Peter, 
the  Pope  formed  a  plan  more  magnificent  than 
anything  since  the  days  of  the  Roman  Em- 
perors. Three  great  arcaded  streets,  a  huge 
forum,  a  Papal  palace  as  large  as  Nero's  Golden 
House,  and  a  basilica  that  dwarfed  the  Pantheon 
were  the  figures  of  this  dream  of  marble  magnifi- 
cence. The  first  step  toward  realizing  it  was  to  de- 
stroy a  little  basilica  which  for  more  than  a  thousand 
years  had  preserved  the  graves  of  that  Probus  and 
his  wife  who  had  been  the  friend  of  Ambrose  and 
Symmachus.  For  it  is  a  strange  contradiction  in 
the  life  of  Nicholas  that  no  one  was  ever  a  more 
ruthless  plunderer  and  destroyer  of  old  buildings  to 
get  space  or  stone  than  this  son  of  Humanism  in  the 
Chair  of  St.  Peter. 

The  realization  of  his  other  ideal,  the  rule  of  peace 
by  peace,  was  perhaps  impossible  without  a  renunci- 
ation of  traditional  Papal  rights  which  would  have 
appeared  the  most  violent  of  revolutions.  The  peo- 
ple of  Rome  were  a  feeble  folk,  both  in  war  and 
peace — filled  with  great  enthusiasms,  but  hysterical. 
Nicholas  shrank  from  the  tyranny  they  needed.  And 
yet  it  was  his  fate  to  provoke  conspiracy.  Stefano 
Porcaro,  a  member  of  one  of  the  lesser  noble  fami- 
lies, was  a  man  of  distinction,  largely  acquainted 
among  the  leaders  of  the  Humanists,  and  a  corre- 
spondent of  the  Florentine  circle,  who  had  filled 


The  Fall  of  Constantinople.  1 6 1 

several  offices  of  State  at  home  and  abroad.  Moved 
either  by  enthusiasm  or  ambition,  he  bound  a  body 
of  men  by  oath  to  fire  the  Vatican,  fall  upon  the 
Pope  and  cardinals  during  the  celebration  of  mass, 
capture  or  kill  them,  and  proclaim  the  Republic,  with 
himself  as  Tribune.  The  chiefs  of  this  last  important 
plot  to  restore  the  ancient  Republic*  ended  on  the 
gallows,  and  it  had  no  result  except  to  embitter 
Nicholas  and  increase  his  constitutional  timidity ;  but 
it  is  interesting  as  a  type  of  a  class  of  conspiracies,  all 
appealing  to  the  example  of  antiquity  and  choosing 
the  Church  as  a  convenient  place  for  assassinations, 
which  are  scattered  through  the  fifteenth  century  of 
Italian  history.  Everywhere  the  power  of  the  citi- 
zens was  decayed  and  the  chartered  liberties  of  the 
cities  of  Italy  usurped  by  tyrants  who  knew  no  law 
save  of  their  own  making.  As  early  as  Boccaccio 
Humanism  had  begun  to  adorn  the  maxim  that  the 
murder  of  a  tyrant  is  the  praise  of  God.  And  when 
Humanism  had  become  the  mode  it  was  natural  that, 
since  law  had  perished,  envy,  discontent,  or  devotion 
should  frequently  imitate  the  examples  of  Brutus  or 
Catiline. 

But  Nicholas's  love  of  peace  was  disturbed  by 
something  far  more  tragic  than  a  masquerading  con- 
spiracy. In  the  height  of  his  splendid  pontificate 
the  fall  of  Constantinople  resounded  through  Europe. 
Christendom  ought  not  to  have  been  surprised,  be- 
cause embassy  after  embassy  had  sought  help,  but  a 
great  shock  of  wrath  and  fear  ran  through  the  nations 
of  the  West.  For  a  hundred  years  the  walls  of  Con- 
stantinople had  stood  as  a  bulwark  against  Asia.  And 


1 62  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

when  it  fell  the  imaginations  of  men  saw  the  ruthless 
Turk  swarming  up  the  Danube,  down  the  Rhine,  and 
along  the  Mediterranean  to  conquer  Europe.  The 
Papacy,  as  from  "  the  watch-tower  of  Christendom," 
sounded  the  alarm,  and  the  call  for  a  crusade  went 
to  every  bishopric  of  Europe.  But  even  fear,  so  long 
as  it  remained  vague  and  distant,  could  not  unite  the 
Christian  world  to  common  action.  Only  a  meagre 
response  came.  The  folks'  preacher  Capistrano  wrote 
from  Germany  to  the  Pope :  "  All  princes  and  lords 
say  with  one  voice,  '  Why  should  we  set  our  lives 
and  our  children's  bread  in  hazard  against  the  Turk, 
while  the  chief  priest  lets  the  treasure  he  ought  to 
spend  on  the  defence  of  the  Holy  Faith  be  wasted 
on  towers  and  walls,  chalk  and  stone  ? ' '  And  it 
came  to  pass  that  the  talented,  once  simple-living 
and  merry  Tommaso  of  Sarzana,  sickened  of  all  his 
splendors  and  artistic  pleasures,  and  died,  glad  to  be 
released  from  the  heavy  burden  of  an  office  he  had 
taken  with  great  anticipations. 

He  called  his  cardinals  around  his  bed  and,  after 
the  fashion  of  antiquity,  delivered  to  them  a  stately 
speech,  the  apology  for  his  pontificate.  Even  through 
the  rhetoric  of  his  biographer  we  may  see  the  real 
feeling  of  the  honest  ecclesiastic  and  the  mens  sibicon- 
scia  recti  of  the  dying  Humanist.  He  told  them  he 
had  found  the  Holy  Church  rent  by  war  and  crushed 
with  poverty.  He  had  healed  her  schisms,  paid  her 
debts,  won  back  her  lost  cities  and  secured  them  by 
fortresses.  He  had  made  her  magnificent  with 
splendid  buildings,  adorned  her  by  the  noblest  forms 
of  art,  and  given  her  great  store  of  books  and  car- 


The  Dying  Humanist.  163 

pets,  garments  and  silver  utensils.  And  he  had 
gathered  all  these  treasures,  not  by  greed,  simony, 
or  avarice,  but  rather  had  used  a  magnanimous  lib- 
erality in  building,  in  book-collecting,  in  rewarding 
men  of  science.  All  these  treasures  came  from  the 
divine  grace  of  the  Creator  and  the  continuous  peace 
of  the  Church. 

It  is  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  thing  in 
Nicholas's  life  that  this  perfectly  true  eulogy — and 
criticism — of  his  pontificate  should  have  been  uttered 
by  himself. 


PERIOD   II. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

CALIXTUS  III.,  THE  OLD  SPANIARD,  HIS  FAMILY 
PRIDE  AND  HIS  ZEAL  AGAINST  THE  INFIDEL 
— PIUS  II.,  THE  CULTURED  MAN  OF  THE 
WORLD  WHO  DIED  A  CRUSADER — PAUL  II., 
THE  SPLENDOR-LOVING  VENETIAN  NEPOT. 

T  the  death  of  Nicholas  at  least  two  of  the 
prominent  candidates,  Domenico  Capra- 
nica  and  Bessarion,  the  learned  Greek 
convert,  were  distinguished  Humanists. 
But  the  "  rhythm  of  the  Papacy  "  pre- 
vailed. The  Spaniard,  Alfonso  Borgia,  seventy- 
seven  years  old,  a  learned  canonist,  took  the  title  of 
Calixtus  III.  ;  and  the  Vatican  became  at  once  the 
hospital  of  an  infirm  old  man,  filled,  as  in  Eugenius's 
days,  with  monks.  Two  interests  roused  the  Pope 
from  the  weakness  of  age — the  love  of  his  nephews 
and  his  zeal  for  the  Turkish  war. 

Two  of  his  sisters'  sons,  one  only  twenty-two 
years  old,  were  made  cardinals,  against  the  protest 
of  the  best  of  the  College ;  a  third  became  standard- 
bearer  of  the  Church,  Duke  of  Spoleto,  Regent  of 
Terracina,  and  was  loaded  with  riches.  A  host  of 
Spanish  poor  relations  and  hungry  adventurers  flocked 

164 


Calixtus  III.  165 


to  Rome  and  filled  the  streets  with  Spanish  dress 
and  speech.  The  police  courts  fell  into  their  hands, 
and  the  swaggering  adherents  of  the  Bullshead  (the 
weapon  of  the  Borgias)  terrorized  the  citizens  and 
made  the  name  of  the  "  Catalans  "  hated.  One  of 
these  lusty  young  voluptuaries  thus  foisted  into  the 
highest  offices  of  the  Church  was  to  become  Alex- 
ander VI.  and  the  father  of  Cassar  Borgia. 

Into  the  Turkish  war  the  old  man  flung  himself 
with  the  passionate  zeal  of  a  Spaniard.  The  two 
hundred  thousand  florins  left  in  the  treasury  were 
expended  on  a  fleet.  To  add  to  this  sum  he  sold 
the  jewels  and  vessels  of  the  Church,  and  even 
ordered  the  silver  clasps  to  be  taken  from  Nicholas's 
books  and  sent  to  the  melting-pot.  Many  of  the 
precious  Greek  manuscripts  he  gave  to  a  philistine 
cardinal,  whose  household  lost  or  destroyed  them. 
By  his  orders  every  church  bell  in  Europe  rang  three 
times  a  day,  and  a  swarm  of  barefoot  monks  spread 
everywhere,  calling  on  all  Christians  to  take  the 
Cross.  But  the  defeat  of  Mohammed  at  Belgrade  in 
1456  by  the  Regent  of  Hungary  relieved  the  imme- 
diate pressure  of  danger,  and  Calixtus  had  small 
satisfaction  of  his  crusade,  except  to  know  that  his 
squadron  of  sixteen  triremes  was  afloat  and  ready. 
Then  the  hand  of  death  came  upon  him,  and  he  died  at 
eighty,  after  apontificate  of  three  years  (August,  1458). 

The  Cardinal  Enea  Sylvio  Piccolimini  was  elected, 
and  took  the  title  of  Pius  II.  He  was  the  son  of  a 
Sienese  nobleman  who  had  been  educated  in  the 
High  School  of  Siena  and  under  Francesco  Filelfo  at 
Florence.  He  began  his  career  as  a  prelate's  secre- 


1 66  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

tary  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven  in  the  service  of 
Cardinal  Capranica,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  anti- 
papal  party  of  the  Council  of  Basle,  from  which  he 
passed  in  quick  succession  to  the  households  of  sev- 
eral other  prelates.  At  the  age  of  thirty  he  found 
himself,  in  company  with  Tommaso  of  Sarzana 
(Nicholas  V.),  in  the  service  of  Cardinal  Albergati. 
He  travelled  on  several  diplomatic  missions,  and 
finally,  after  the  split  of  the  Council  at  Basle,  became 
a  secretary  in  the  Curia  of  the  Antipope,  Felix  V. 
(1440).  In  1442  the  clever  arrangement  and  neat 
style  of  a  letter  fom  Felix  to  the  German  King  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  a  German  prelate,  and  find- 
ing that  its  author  was  present  with  the  embassy,  he 
urged  the  King  to  offer  him  a  position  as  royal  sec- 
retary. Enea  was  rejoiced,  because  he  had  re- 
garded with  dismay  the  increasing  poverty  of  the 
Antipope,  who  was  saved  from  simony  because  no 
one  would  buy  his  Church  appointments.  And  be- 
sides, he  reflected  with  apprehension  that  if  Eugenius 
won  in  the  schism  his  career  was  ruined.  The  ser- 
vice of  neutral  Germany  seemed  to  him,  as  he  wrote 
to  a  friend,  secure  for  the  present  and  most  promis- 
ing for  the  future. 

He  commended  himself  to  his  new  master,  and 
it  was  only  a  short  time  before  he  became  one  of 
the  four  deputies  of  the  King  to  a  Council  of 
representatives  of  the  German  priests  and  bishops 
to  discuss  the  schism.  A  double  embassy  carried 
their  conclusions  to  the  Council  at  Basle  and  to 
Eugenius  IV.  at  Rome.  Enea  Sylvio  was  the 
ambassador  of  the  second  message.  He  used  the 


Old  Travelling  Companions.          167 

audience  with  the  Pope  to  make  his  own  peace,  and 
became  a  secret  tool  of  Papal  politics  to  return  the 
German  Church  to  obedience.  In  the  Papal  court  he 
met  his  old  comrade,  Tommaso  of  Sarzana,  who  at 
first  refused  his  hand,  and,  even  when  informed  of 
Enea's  secret  conversion,  would  have  little  to  do 
with  him.  It  was  not  long  after  the  secretary's  re- 
turn that  the  King  sold  his  obedience  in  a  secret 
agreement  for  two  hundred  and  twenty-one  thousand 
ducats.  In  the  spring  of  1446  the  German  princes 
despatched  an  embassy  to  the  Pope  to  insist  upon 
the  rights  of  the  German  bishops.  Frederick  asked 
that  one  of  the  Papal  embassy  then  with  him  should 
return  at  once  to  Rome.  And  the  Bishop  of  Bo- 
logna, once  Tommaso  of  Sarzana,  started.  Hard  on 
his  heels  the  King  sent  also  his  secretary,  Enea 
Sylvio.  The  two  had  a  miserable  time  crossing  the 
Carinthian  Alps,  for  the  torrents  had  destroyed  the 
bridges ;  and  once,  when  they  were  eating  together 
at  a  little  inn,  the  Bishop  is  said  to  have  jokingly 
urged  the  secretary  to  order  something  else,  with  the 
words,  "  Why  should  we  be  economical,  since  we 
are  both  to  become  Popes?"  One  other  long  jour- 
ney across  the  Alps  they  made,  not  together,  for 
untimely  sickness,  first  of  one  and  then  of  the  other, 
separated  them  ;  and  then,  their  work  being  done,  and 
Germany  in  obedience,  they  received  their  reward — 
the  Bishop  of  Bologna  a  cardinal's  hat ;  Enea  Sylvio 
the  promise  of  the  Bishopric  of  Trieste  as  soon  as  its 
sickly  incumbent  had  finished  dying.  Henceforth 
his  rise  was  rapid,  although  not  as  rapid  as  his  old 
acquaintance,  Tommaso,  who  in  one  year  became 


1 68  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

bishop,  cardinal,  and  Pope;  for  it  took  him  eleven 
years  to  make  the  same  career. 

Pius's  past  embarrassed  him  when  he  ascended  the 
Papal  throne,  not  simply  because  he  had  been  the 
secretary  of  an  Antipope,  but  also  because  he  had 
lived  so  openly  the  life  of  a  man  of  the  world  that 
his  literary  fame  was  largely  based  on  a  highly  colored 
novel  and  a  series  of  letters  describing  his  social  ex- 
periences in  a  style  more  interesting  than  edifying. 
He  issued  a  retraction,  in  which  he  confessed  his 
sins  and  compared  himself  to  Paul  and  Augustine. 
He  never  had  a  trace  of  the  persecuting  bitterness  or 
missionary  zeal  of  the  Apostle,  or  one  flame  of  the 
mighty  passion  of  Augustine  either  for  sin  or  right- 
eousness. But  his  confession  and  repentance  seem 
to  have  been  honest.  From  the  time  when  he  re- 
ceived ordination  at  forty,  an  age  shown  by  experi- 
ence to  be  more  apt  for  moral  breakdown  than  for 
moral  reform,  he  began  to  purge  and  live  cleanly.  And 
there  are  plain  evidences  that,  as  this  literary  adven- 
turer began  to  make  his  career,  he  was  sobered  and  ren- 
dered thoughtful  by  the  responsibilities  of  his  position. 

When  this  wandering  secretary,  who  made  his  liv- 
ing by  being  a  rhetorician  and  stylist,  mounted  the 
Papal  throne,  what  a  thrill  must  have  spread  through 
all  the  hungry  Humanists  of  every  court,  whose  am- 
bitions had  previously  been  bounded  by  the  chance 
of  some  little  bishopric !  Nicholas  V.  had,  after  all, 
been  only  an  adopted  son  of  Humanism.  He  had 
made  his  doctor's  degree  in  theology.  But  if  Pius 
set  an  enormous  reward  on  a  lost  manuscript,  every 
one  thought  it  would  be,  not  a  Hebrew  Gospel,  but 


Pius  and  the  Humanists.  169 

the  vanished  Livy.  They  were  mistaken.  He  had 
risen,  to  use  the  phrase  of  Tacitus,  "  quod  par  nego- 
ties  neque  supra  erat."  But  it  was  evident  that  he 
felt  some  measure  of  the  truth  behind  his  rhetoric 
when,  in  an  oration  over  the  coffin  of  the  Doge  of 
Venice,  he  once  said :  "  The  divine  gift  of  ruling  can- 
not be  learned  from  the  philosophers.  It  is  only  to 
be  found  in  those  depths  of  the  soul  into  which  man 
does  not  descend  without  God." 

With  the  exception  of  Filelfo,  most  of  the  Human- 
ists he  had  known  in  his  youth  were  dead,  and  his 
old  teacher  made  himself  impossible  by  his  greedi- 
ness for  favors.  After  all,  Pius  was  rather  a  writer 
and  speaker  than  a  scholar.  It  was  his  own  saying 
that  poets  and  orators  must  be  extraordinary  or  they 
are  worth  nothing,  and  he  did  not  relish  opening  the 
crib  for  every  limping  Pegasus.  He  seemed  to  be 
aware  that  his  own  good  wine  needed  no  bush.  A 
confidence  not  disappointed ;  for  his  writings  are  per- 
haps more  read  and  quoted  than  any  of  his  genera- 
tion. He  was  a  patron  of  the  arts,  and  his  court  was 
visited  by  copyists,  miniature-painters,  goldsmiths, 
painters,  and  architects.  His  birthplace  of  Corsig- 
nano  he  called  Pienza  and  decorated  with  a  cathedral 
and  stately  palace,  strangely  out  of  proportion  to  the 
little  town  of  a  thousand  inhabitants.  But  a  cry  of 
disappointment  went  up  when  it  was  seen  that  Pius 
was  to  imitate  Nicholas  only  in  his  love  of  peace, 
and,  while  he  banished  the  monks  of  Calixtus,  was  to 
inherit  his  zeal  for  the  crusade.  The  old  Filelfo 
voiced  the  feelings  of  the  Humanists  when,  having 
insulted  the  Pope  during  life  in  a  most  false  and 


1 70  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

scandalous  anonymous  invective,  he  wrote  at  his 
death  a  "  Gratulatio  de  Morte  Pius  II.,"  which  held 
him  up  to  view  as  an  ungrateful  and  envious  foe  of 
poets  and  scholars. 

Scarcely  was  Pius  consecrated  when  he  announced 
the  plan  of  a  Peace  Congress  of  all  Christian  princes. 
But  it  met  with  little  success,  and  meantime  the  vic- 
torious arms  of  Mohammed, recovering  from  the  check 
at  Belgrade,  were  pushed  forward  up  the  Danube 
and  along  the  coasts  of  the  Mediterranean.  The 
Hungarians,  the  bulwark  of  Christendom  by  land,  as 
Venice  and  Genoa  were  by  sea,  were  weakened  by 
war  with  the  Emperor.  The  efforts  of  Pius's  ambas- 
sador, Cardinal  Carvajal,  brought  peace,  and  finally, 
in  1463,  roused  Venice  and  Hungary  to  the  attack. 
But  the  allies  engaged  to  their  support  did  not  ap- 
pear in  arms,  and  the  zeal  of  the  Doge  began  to  cool. 
Pius  himself  took  the  Cross,  and,  sick  unto  death,  was 
carried  in  boat  and  litter  across  Italy  to  the  seaport 
of  Ancona.  The  journey  took  a  month,  and  before 
he  reached  the  goal  he  found  the  roads  crowded  with 
volunteers  from  all  parts  of  Europe,  undisciplined 
and  unarmed,  often  starving  and  desperate.  This 
wild  mass,  finding  no  ships  or  organization  at  An- 
cona, slowly  dispersed,  to  every  one's  relief.  At 
last,  nearly  a  month  late,  the  Venetian  sails  hove  in 
sight.  The  Pope  watched  them  from  his  window, 
but  in  the  morning  he  was  too  ill  to  see  the  Doge, 
and  the  next  day  he  died.  The  crusade  died  with 
him.  A  medal  shows  the  Pope  seated  in  the  bow  of 
a  ship,  holding  in  one  hand  the  standard  of  the  Cross, 
and  raising  the  other  in  prayer.  The  inscription 


Europe  and  the  Turk.  171 

runs,  "  Let  God  arise,  and  let  his  enemies  be  scat- 
tered." The  image  has  impressed  itself  on  the  mem- 
ory and  imagination  of  men,  and  has  linked  together 
Urban  the  inspirer  and  Pius  the  martyr  of  the  War 
of  the  Cross  against  the  Crescent. 

But  it  was  a  different  age  from  the  days  of  Urban. 
Europe  was  incapable  of  large  united  action.  The 
feudal  system  was  dying,  and  the  throes  of  its  agony 
filled  the  world  with  misery  and  disaster.  It  was 
only  as  against  foes  who  spoke  another  tongue  that 
the  sense  of  nationality  was  strong,  and  every  land 
was  given  up  to  strife  which  to  the  common  sense  of 
the  time  did  not  appear  civil,  but  only  the  natural 
defence  of  inherited  rights.  No  sooner  was  the 
Hundred  Years'  War  of  France  and  England  ended, 
in  1453,  than  the  French  Crown  and  its  great  vassals 
began  a  civil  struggle,  while  in  England  the  houses 
of  York  and  Lancaster  flew  at  each  other's  throats. 
Meantime,  Aragon  and  Castile  were  fighting  in  Spain, 
and  the  German  cities  and  princes  were  plunging  into 
ceaseless  feuds  that  wasted  the  strength  of  the  Em- 
pire for  nothing.  Not  even  the  fear  and  hatred  of 
the  Turk  could  bring  Europe  to  concord.  The  jeal- 
ousies of  factions  enabled  him  to  gain  a  foothold  in 
Europe,  even  as  the  jealousy  of  nations  now  permits 
him  to  sterilize  his  dominions  with  a  feeble  tyranny. 
Hungary,  Poland,  Genoa,  and  Venice  held  him  at 
bay.  Had  they  been  backed  by  a  small  part  of  the 
men-at-arms  of  France,  the  bowmen  of  England,  the 
landsknechts  of  Germany,  the  burghers  of  Flanders 
and  Switzerland,  and  the  money  of  Italy,  he  would 
soon  have  been  sent  back  whence  he  came. 


172  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

It  was  a  subtle  and  real  prophecy  of  the  dark  days 
when  Italy  was  to  be  trampled  by  the  feet  of  foreign 
armies,  making  her  riches  and  beauty  the  prize  of 
war,  that,  of  nineteen  cardinals  assembled  for  an 
election,  six  were  Frenchmen  and  six  Spaniards. 
The  Italian  party  was  strong,  and  the  Cardinal  of  San 
Marco,  Pietro  Barbo,  was  elected  at  the  first  ballot. 
Nicholas  and  Pius  had  been  "  new  men"  who,  having 
chosen  to  serve  the  Church,  had  risen  without  the 
aid  of  family  connection,  by  sheer  force  of  ability. 
But  Pietro  Barbo  was  one  of  the  many  nephews  of  a 
Pope  who  attained  to  the  tiara.  He  was  the  son  of 
the  sister  of  Eugenius  IV.,  and,  following  the  custom 
of  the  sons  of  the  merchant  nobles  of  Venice,  was  in 
readiness  to  embark  for  a  trading  voyage  to  the  East, 
when,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  he  heard  of  the  election 
of  his  uncle  to  the  Papacy.  He  at  once  went  to  him 
in  Ferrara,  studied,  took  holy,  orders,  and  at  the  age 
of  twenty-two  beca'me  a  cardinal.  He  was  a  man 
of  very  moderate  intellectual  abilities,  but  in- 
herited the  dignified  bearing  and  personal  beauty 
of  his  family.  So  entirely  conscious  was  he  of 
his  advantages  in  this  respect  that  nothing  but  the 
protest  of  the  cardinals  prevented  him  from  taking 
the  name  of  Formosus  and  induced  him  to  finally 
adopt  the  title  of  Paul  II.  Both  before  and  after 
election  he  signed  the  new  capitulation,  in  which  the 
cardinals  renewed  their  constant  attempt  to  make  the 
Church  an  oligarchy  instead  of  a  monarchy.  By  this 
agreement  the  Pope  was  pledged  to  carry  on  the  war 
against  the  Turk,  to  reform  the  Curia,  to  call  a 
Council  in  three  years,  to  restrict  the  College  to 


The  Splendid  Paul  II.  1 73 

twenty -four  members,  to  name  none  under  thirty 
years  old,  none  untrained  in  theology  or  jurispru- 
dence, and  not  more  than  one  of  his  own  relatives. 
The  agreement  disappeared  after  Paul's  coronation. 
Instead  of  it  he  presented  a  new  agreement  in  con- 
clave, covered  it  with  his  hand,  and  bade  the  cardi- 
nals sign.  Only  one  refused,  the  old  Carvajal,  though 
Bessarion  made  a  long  resistance. 

The  successor  of  Pius  and  Nicholas  was  not  with- 
out some  pretensions  as  a  patron  of  art,  but  on  very 
different  ground.  His  taste  was  rather  that  of  the 
noble  Venetian  merchant  whose  family  had  acquired 
in  the  Oriental  trade  the  love  of  plate,  silks,  and 
jewels.  He  had  a  new  tiara  made  with  two  hundred 
thousand  florins'  worth  of  precious  stones  in  it,  and 
was  fond  of  displaying  a  superb  emerald  on  his  fin- 
ger. He  found  a  good  opportunity  of  increasing  his 
collections  in  the  death  of  Scarampo,  the  executioner 
of  Vitelleschi,  who  had  succeeded  him  as  commis- 
sioned Judge  Lynch  in  the  Papal  States.  Eugenius 
had  rewarded  the  ruthless  peacemaker  with  a  cardi- 
nal's hat  by  the  same  creation  which  gave  it  to  his 
nephew,  and  the  two  had  hated  each  other  ever  since. 
When  the  Cardinal  died,  leaving  to  his  nephews  a 
treasure  specially  rich  in  plate  and  jewels,  his  old 
.enemy,  now  Pope,  reversed  the  will  and  confiscated 
the  estate ;  and  all  Rome  rejoiced  at  this  posthumous 
plundering  of  the  great  plunderer. 

The  Pope  was  as  generous  as  he  was  splendor- 
loving.  He  presented  his  cardinals  with  purple  man- 
tles and  scarlet  saddle-cloths,  insured  each  one  whose 
income  fell  below  four  thousand  gold  florins  an  addi- 


1 74  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

tion  of  one  hundred  florins  a  month,  gave  great  feasts 
to  the  city  officers,  and  strange  carnival  sports — races 
of  buffaloes,  asses,  old  men,  and  Jews — to  the  people. 
In  fact,  except  that  he  held  himself  aloof  from  foreign 
politics  and  cared  nothing  for  the  game  of  diplomacy, 
his  court  differed  little  from  that  of  any  other  rich 
prince  of  his  time  who  understood  the  art  of  enjoy- 
ing life  and  keeping  his  people  content  by  flattery 
and  justice.  He  regulated  the  misuse  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal funds  and  stopped  a  good  deal  of  indirect  bribery 
and  simony.  He  made  an  earnest  effort  to  check  the 
incessant  murders  which  arose  from  the  vendetta  or 
custom  of  the  avenger  of  blood — feuds  bitter  and 
more  constant  than  the  old  family  quarrels  of  Ken- 
tucky. He  tried  to  regulate  taxes,  and  destroyed 
the  robber  nest  of  Count  Eversus,  bandit  and  coun- 
terfeiter, who  had  long  terrorized  a  part  of  the  patri- 
monium.  It  was  as  a  matter  of  practical  politics  that 
he  came  into  conflict  with  the  Humanists  of  the  court 
and  city.  The  College  of  Abbreviators  (cabinet  sec- 
retaries of  the  Papacy)  had  been  filled  by  Nicholas 
with  his  friends.  And  as  the  easily  triumphant  can- 
didate of  the  aristocratic  ecclesiastical  party,  himself 
a  nepot  and  supported  by  the  younger  and  more 
splendor-loving  of  the  cardinals,  Paul  had  no  inten- 
tion of  continuing  to  pay  salaries  to  seventy  Human- 
ists whom  he  regarded  as  learned  fossils  wasting  the 
patronage  he  wished  to  divide  among  those  who  had 
been  useful  to  him. 

The  displaced,  losing  the  comfortable  positions 
they  had  expected  to  hold  for  life,  raised  a  great 
outcry,  but  made  little  by  it.  And  when  their  leader, 
Platina,  sent  a  letter  to  the  Pope,  threatening  to  ap- 


Paul  and  the  Roman  Academy.        175 

peal  to  a  Council,  he  was  cast  into  a  hard  imprison- 
ment that  soon  brought  him  to  his  knees. 

It  was  similar  practical  politics  that  led  Paul  to  sus- 
pend the  Roman  Academy.  The  younger  poets  and 
scholars  were  formed  into  an  Academy  whose  mem- 
bers took  Greek  and  Roman  names  and  celebrated 
the  birthdays  of  Rome  and  Romulus ;  at  which  cere- 
monies Professor  Pomponius  Leto  was  Pontifex 
Maximus.  But  Paul  was  mindful  of  Stefano  Porcari, 
with  his  dangerous  enthusiasm  for  the  liberty  and 
glory  of  antiquity,  and  his  police  suddenly  swooped 
down  upon  the  Academy  and  lodged  twenty  mem- 
bers in  jail.  Some  of  them  paid  on  the  rack  for  their 
meetings;  but  even  the  torture  disclosed  nothing 
more  serious  than  the  boasting  of  a  drunkard.  An 
accusation  of  heresy  was  not  pressed  very  hard,  and 
in  the  end  Pomponius  resumed  his  lectures,  and  the 
accused  heretic  became  librarian  of  the  Vatican  and 
historiographer  of  the  Popes. 

While  the  Pope  thus  absorbed  himself  in  ruling 
and  enjoying  Rome,  the  Turk  was  conquering.  The 
fall  of  Negroponte  woke  Italy  to  a  pressing  danger, 
and  united  the  five  great  powers,  Venice,  Naples, 
Florence,  Milan,  and  the  Pope,  in  a  league  against 
the  common  foe  of  Christendom.  The  signing  of  the 
league  was  among  the  last  things  Paul  did.  Toward 
the  end  of  July,  1471,  he  took  supper  in  the  garden 
by  his  titular  church.  In  the  morning  they  found 
him  dead  in  his  bed.  He  had  given  the  red  hat  to 
three  of  his  nephews,  but  he  gave  none  of  them  an 
influence  or  duty  in  the  government  greater  than  his 
abilities  warranted :  for  Paul  was  a  ruler  who  needed 
no  favorites  and  suffered  no  counsellors. 


PERIOD   II. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  NEW  LEARNING  CROSSES  THE  ALPS — ITS 
SPREAD  IN  FRANCE — THE  FORERUNNERS  OF 
GERMAN  HUMANISM. 


URING  this  generation  (1440-71),  in 
which  Humanism  had  furnished  two 
Popes  and  become  the  ruling  spirit  of 
Italian  society,  it  was  making  the  first 
faulty  visible  beginnings  of  spreading 
beyond  the  Alps ;  but  not  deliberately,  for  Humanism 
showed  at  first  a  very  provincial  spirit,  and  nothing 
could  exceed  the  scorn  with  which  the  Italian  man 
of  letters  spoke  of  all  the  other  nations  of  the  world 
except  his  own.  Petrarch  displayed,  when  he  went 
to  Cologne,  a  naive  astonishment  at  finding  "  a  well- 
built  city,  good  manners,  dignified  men,  and  beauti- 
ful and  pure  women."  Paris  was  a  centre  of  classic 
learning,  where  lectures  were  given  on  the  Latin 
poets ;  a  city  of  bibliophiles,  which  Richard  of  Bury 
(born  1281)  named  the  "  Paradise  of  the  World  "  be- 
cause of  its  rich  book  market;  but  Petrarch  called 
Frenchmen  a  nation  of  barbarians,  and  said  one 
must  not  look  for  orators  or  poets  outside  of  Italy. 
Boccaccio  called  the  Spaniards  half-barbarians. 

176 


France  and  Humanism.  177 

Poggio  could  not  endure  the  manners  of  the  Lon- 
doners, and  wrote  sarcastic  letters  on  the  intolerable 
length  of  their  feasts,  at  which  he  could  only  keep 
awake  by  going  out  and  dashing  cold  water  on  his 
eyes.  In  the  same  spirit,  Enea  Sylvio,  during  the 
days  of  his  German  secretaryship,  made  merry  over 
the  gluttony  and  drunkenness  of  the  Germans,  who 
had  no  intellectual  life.  He  caricatured  the  nation  in 
the  person  of  a  certain  count  who  had  his  boys  waked 
in  the  middle  of  the  night  and  poured  wine  down 
their  throats  because  they  must  be  thirsty ;  and  when 
it  made  them  sick  fell  into  a  passion  and  accused 
his  wife  of  infidelity.  But  the  New  Learning 
which  these  scornful  writers  so  brilliantly  advanced 
and  defended  began  almost  immediately  to  spread 
among  the  transalpine  peoples  they  despised. 

The  first  faint  beginnings  of  this  spread  of  the 
New  Learning  were  perceived  in  France,  which  had 
preserved  a  stronger  intellectual  life  than  any  other 
nation  except  Italy.  Scarcely  was  Petrarch  dead 
before  the  stirrings  of  the  movement  of  which  he  was 
the  apostle  began  to  appear  in  the  land  on  whose 
borders  he  had  spent  so  much  of  his  life.  Jean  de 
Montreuil  (1354-1418),  whose  learning  and  Latin 
style  raised  him  to  the  position  of  Chancellor  of 
Charles  VI.,  was  a  great  reader  and  admirer  of  Pe- 
trarch. He  found  a  living  model  and  teacher  in 
Salutato.  Jean  styled  him  the  "  Father  of  Latin 
Eloquence,"  maintained  a  correspondence  with  him, 
and  expressed  his  admiration  by  sending  presents  to 
his  wife  showing  the  skill  of  French  workmen  in  the 
fine  arts.  His  great  friend  was  Nicholas  of  Cleman- 
L 


178  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

ges,  who  formed  his  swinging  Latin  style  on  Cicero 
and  Quintilian  so  successfully  that  the  Italians  won- 
dered to  find  a  Frenchman  so  accomplished  in  elo- 
quence and  poetry.  He  was  Papal  secretary  during 
the  years  of  the  schism,  and  when  he  lost  that  posi- 
tion lived  from  the  income  of  Church  benefices.  In 
the  later  years  of  his  life  he  lectured  on  theology  and 
eloquence  in  Paris.  Neither  of  these  men  knew 
Greek,  nor  did  any  Frenchman  among  their  contem- 
poraries. And  it  was  not  until  1430,  probably  after 
the  death  of  both,  that  we  find  the  first  notice  of  the 
study  of  that  tongue  at  Paris — the  record  of  a  small 
salary  paid  to  certain  masters  who  taught  Greek  and 
Hebrew.  This  first  beginning  seems  to  have  come 
to  nothing,  and  it  was  1456  before  an  Italian  who 
had  been  in  Greece  was  installed  as  teacher  of  rheto- 
ric and  the  Greek  tongue.  The  study  does  not  seem 
to  have  amounted  to  very  much,  for  a  whole  gener- 
ation later  we  are  told  by  the  most  competent  of 
judges  that  the  instruction  in  Greek  was  imperfect 
and  unsatisfactory.  But  the  impulse  which  found 
expression  in  such  men  as  Jean  of  Montreuil  and 
Nicholas  of  Clemanges  did  not  die.  In  the  face  of 
the  Sorbonne,  the  centre  of  traditional  learning  and 
reactionary  orthodoxy,  there  flourished  at  Paris  a 
little  coterie  of  lovers  and  promoters  of  the  New 
Learning. 

During  these  thirty  years  (1440-71)  a  generation 
of  German-speaking  men,  whom  we  may  call,  for  the 
sake  of  clearness,  the  "  Forerunners  of  German 
Humanism,"  must  have  been  doing  a  quiet  but 
mighty  work  of  preparation  in  their  native  land.  At 


Humanism  in  Germany.  179 

the  end  of  the  period  (1471),  when  they  were  dead 
or  growing  old,  Humanism  was  still  an  exotic  in 
Germany.  But  by  their  labors  the  soil  had  been  so 
well  prepared  that  before  another  generation  had 
passed,  their  successors,  the  Older  German  Human- 
ists, were  confessedly  able  to  wrest  the  palm  of 
scholarship  from  Italy  and  carry  it  to  the  North. 

The  exact  methods  of  this  preparation  would  be 
hard  to  trace  and  tedious  to  describe  in  detail.  It  is 
better  to  suggest  by  a  few  striking  examples  the 
processes  by  which  the  New  Learning  began  to  es- 
tablish itself  in  Germany. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  unity 
of  Europe  was  broken.  The  national  sentiment  had 
everywhere  rejected  the  old  idea  of  the  organization 
of  Christendom  into  one  great  civil  institution.  Be- 
fore the  middle  of  the  century  the  strength  of  this 
sentiment  was  demonstrated.  The  party  of  Conciliar 
Reform  used  it  at  Constance  to  defeat  the  Papalists 
by  the  plan  of  voting,  not  as  a  whole,  but  in  nations. 
And  the  Papalists  in  turn  skilfully  used  it  to  defeat 
the  reform  of  the  Curia  by  the  granting  of  national 
concordats.  It  was  made  absolutely  plain  by  the 
supineness  with  which  Europe  allowed  Constantino- 
ple to  fall  before  the  Turk. 

But  in  spite  of  this  change,  three  agencies  operated 
mightily  to  preserve  a  sort  of  unity  of  Christendom. 
The  Holy  Roman  Empire  had  broken  down.  Sig- 
ismund  was  only  in  name  the  head  of  Europe.  But 
the  institution  which  had  been  incorporated  into 
the  creation  of  Charles  the  Great,  the  Holy  Church 
Catholic  and  Roman,  survived.  In  the  beginning  of 


180  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

the  fifteenth  century,  corrupted  as  it  was,  weakened 
by  a  hundred  years  of  misrule,  and  shattered  by  the 
conflict  of  two  colleges  of  cardinals  for  its  leadership, 
it  still  kept  intact  its  hierarchical  organization  and  a 
sense  of  unity.  It  was  only  by  virtue  of  his  title  of 
"  Defender  of  the  Church "  that  Sigismund  could 
appear  at  Constance  presiding  over  the  nations.  In 
such  assemblies  Humanism  began  to  spread  by  con- 
tagion, and  German  prelates  who  had  met  the  young 
Humanistic  secretaries  of  their  Italian  brothers,  or 
been  impressed  at  some  banquet  by  the  elegance  of 
their  Latin  citations,  acquired  a  taste  for  the  new 
letters.  This  influence  first  appears  plainly  in  the 
Council  of  Basle.  The  Cardinal  Cesarini,  one  of  the 
noblest  men  of  the  times  and  president  of  the  Council, 
was  a  distinguished  representative  of  the  New  Learn- 
ing. His  graceful  speaking  and  good  style  came  out 
of  the  study  of  Cicero,  Augustine,  and  Lactantius. 
The  same  strain  of  the  eloquence  of  antiquity  ap- 
peared in  the  speeches  of  some  of  the  scholars  of 
Vittorino  da  Feltre.  Traversari  of  Florence  broke 
down,  indeed,  in  his  first  speech,  and  had  to  pull  his 
manuscript  out  of  his  long  sleeves ;  but  he  got  him- 
self in  hand  later,  and  even  sprinkled  his  speeches 
with  quotations  in  Greek.  The  bitterest  ecclesiasti- 
cal politician,  who  had  no  understanding  whatever  of 
the  breadth  and  purity  of  Cesarini's  love  for  the 
Church,  was  impressed  by  the  strength  of  his  style 
of  speaking.  And  the  most  zealous  monk  saw  a  cer- 
tain usefulness  in  Greek,  after  all,  when  Traversari 
used  it  in  defence  of  Papal  authority.  That  the  good 
old  Bishop  of  Chiemsee  should  be  impressed  with 


Gregor  von  Heimburg.  181 

Enea  Sylvio's  style,  and  advise  the  King  to  give 
him  a  place  as  secretary,  is  not  surprising.  And 
it  followed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  the  brilliant 
Italian  became  the  centre  of  a  little  circle  of  German 
imitators. 

This  coterie  met  strong  opposition.  The  works  of 
Enea  and  Poggio  and  the  rest  which  found  the 
quickest  circulation  were  those  in  which  the  new 
style  was  devoted  to  the  service  of  the  goddess  of 
lubricity.  And  the  conservatives  at  once  began  to 
attack  poetry  as  the  servant  of  vice,  and  good  Latin 
as  the  sure  mark  of  a  desire  to  exchange  honest  old 
German  manners  and  morals  for  Italian  falseness  and 
wickedness.  Enea  was  not  slow  to  answer  "  the 
asses  who  thought  little  of  poetry,  the  oxen  who  de- 
spised the  Muses,  the  swine  who  turned  their  backs 
on  the  Humanities."  And  it  did  not  take  much  such 
fighting  to  show  some  defenders  of  righteousness  that 
they  must  have  as  good  weapons  as  their  opponents, 
or  lose.  And  so  there  arose  a  curious  relation,  half 
fascination  and  half  repulsion,  between  the  Humanists 
of  Italy  and  this  generation  which  we  have  called  the 
"  Forerunners  of  German  Humanism."  It  cannot  be 
better  shown  than  in  the  story  of  the  acquaintance 
of  Gregor  von  Heimburg  and  Enea  Sylvio. 

Gregor  was  at  the  Council  of  Basle  as  a  young 
doctor  of  canon  law.  He  was  called  in  1435  to  the 
service  of  the  city  of  Nuremberg,  and  remained  a 
servant  of  princes  and  cities  until  his  death  in  1472. 
He  became  a  great  'patron  of  classic  learning,  and 
delivered  an  oration  in  the  castle  at  Vienna  on  the 
"  Study  of  the  Humanities."  A  circle  of  learned 


1 82  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

friends  gathered  around  him,  clergymen  and  jurists. 
Enea  Sylvio,  then  Bishop  of  Trieste,  addressed  him 
in  a  letter  as  one  who  had  brought  "  Latium  to  Ger- 
many, even  as  of  old  Greece  had  been  brought  to 
Latium."  But  Gregor  had  a  rough  straightforward- 
ness of  speech,  a  sturdy  faithfulness  of  opinion,  that, 
in  spite  of  this  flattery,  brought  him  into  deadly  con- 
flict with  his  old  friend  the  Italian.  It  was  in  1459, 
when  Enea  was  presiding  as  Pius  II.  over  the 
Peace  Congress  at  Mantua,  that  Gregor  was  pre- 
sented as  the  representative  of  several  German 
princes.  His  first  appearance  at  the  Papal  reception 
was  surprising,  for  he  failed  to  remove  his  hat,  and 
his  speech  was  filled  with  ill-concealed  sarcasms 
against  the  finished  style  of  the  Pope,  who  knew  so 
well  how  to  express  the  changes  of  opinions  through 
which  he  had  passed  in  a  career  now  so  brilliantly 
crowned.  At  the  close  of  his  address,  in  which  he 
carelessly  showed  the  curialists  by  his  learned  allu- 
sions how  rhetorically  he  might  have  spoken  had  he 
not  chosen  the  blunt  speech  that  was  not  of  kings' 
courts,  but  of  loyal  hearts,  he  excused  himself  for  not 
removing  his  hat.  He  had  catarrh  and  wanted  to 
keep  his  voice  from  getting  husky.  And  this  Ger- 
man who  could  be  classic,  but  chose  to  be  "  barba- 
rous," became  the  leader  of  the  opposition  which  made 
Pius's  plans  for  enlisting  the  Congress  in  the  crusade 
a  failure.  The  next  year,  when  Gregor,  in  the 
name  of  his  master,  the  Duke  of  Austria,  fastened  on 
the  doors  of  the  chief  churches  of  North  Italy  an 
appeal  from  the  Pope  to  a  General  Council,  Pius 
promptly  excommunicated  him.  He  found  shelter 


The  Confederacy  of  Commerce  ^        1 83 

» 

in  the  service  of  several  German  princes,  like  himself 
in  rebellion  against  the  head  of  the  Church,  but  it 
was  not  till  after  Pius's  death  that  the  ban  was  re- 
moved. This  experience  was  the  cause  and  result  of 
a  reaction  in  Gregor  against  Humanistic  rhetoric. 
"  The  best  sign  of  a  noble  spirit,"  he  said,  "  is  not  to 
make  the  style  of  this  or  that  author  our  own,  but 
rather,  as  the  fruit  of  our  study  of  them,  to  develop 
our  own  individual  talent.  The  bee  who  collects 
honey  is  not  a  good  model  for  the  orator.  Rather, 
like  the  silkworm,  which  spins  silk  out  of  its  vitals, 
he  must  be  able  to  make  speech  out  of  himself." 

Besides  the  Church  another  great  agency  was  still 
active  to  preserve  the  unity  of  Europe.  Money 
knows  no  country  and  trade  no  boundaries,  and  by 
them  the  nations  were  drawn  together  in  a  sort  of 
commercial  confederation.  Florence  had  been  for 
years  the  centre  of  European  finance,  and  Venice  the 
great  market  where  Europe  and  Asia  exchanged 
products.  But  the  free  cities  of  the  North  had  al- 
ready gained  riches  and  skill  in  commerce;  and  in 
particular  Augsburg,  the  centre  of  trade  between 
Italy  and  Germany,  was  rapidly  acquiring  the  wealth 
and  culture  which  made  the  daughters  of  its  patri- 
cians matches  for  princes.  The  greatest  family  of 
their  prince  merchants,  the  Fuggers,  had  laid,  by 
commerce  and  mining,  the  foundations  of  that  for- 
tune which  made  them  the  Rothschilds  of  their  age. 
The  exigencies  of  this  commerce  led  the  merchants 
to  the  South.  So  Sigismund  Gossembrot,  a  rich 
patrician  of  Augsburg,  brought  back  a  taste  for 
classic  literature,  and,  like  his  fellow-townsman,  the 


1§4  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

leading  physician,  Hermann  Schedel,  gathered  a  li- 
brary and  patronized  the  arts.  Gossembrot  sent  his 
two  sons  to  the  school  of  Guarino,  that  they  might 
learn  the  Humanities.  But  such  a  taste  for  foreign 
rationalism  did  not  remain  unrebuked.  Conrad 
Saldner,  for  twenty-five  years  professor  of  theology 
at  the  University  of  Vienna,  became  involved  in 
public  correspondence  with  Gossembrot,  reproaching 
him  with  neglecting  the  learned  men  of  Germany  to 
honor  a  lot  of  half-baked  poets  who  knew  nothing  of 
the  good  old  seven  liberal  arts.  "  Who  are  Bruni, 
Vergerio,  Barbaro,  Valla,  Poggio?"  he  asked.  "I 
never  heard  of  one  of  them,  except  Poggio,  and  I 
never  heard  anything  that  was  good  of  him."  As  for 
Guarino,  whom  Gossfimbrot  hailed  as  a  man  raised 
up  of  God,  the  old  theologian  gave  his  solemn  word 
that  he  had  never  heard  the  name  mentioned  in 
Austria,  Swabia,  Bavaria,  Hungary,  or  Bohemia. 
But  even  the  bitter  truth  in  Saldner's  reproaches 
against  the  "  poets "  could  not  prevail  before  the 
New  Learning.  Honest  old  Mrs.  Partington  and  her 
broom  have  always  been  helpless  against  the  tide. 
Italian  letters  and  art  began  to  become  the  mode 
in  Germany.  And  so  it  was  that  the  Pfalzgraf 
Frederick,  a  just  and  generous  prince,  having  married 
Clara  Dettin,  the  daughter  of  an  Augsburg  patri- 
cian, made  his  court  a  home  of  the  Muses,  and  as 
the  liberal  patron  of  the  University  of  Heidelberg 
was  soon  to  do  much  for  the  spread  of  the  New 
Learning. 

In  one  marked  particular  trade  made  a  free  circuit 
from  North  to  South.     But  this  time  Germany  sent 


The  Republic  of  Letters.  185 

out  the  current.  In  the  early  sixties  two  workmen 
from  the  shop  of  Faust  and  Schoeffer  in  Mayence  car- 
ried their  hand-press  to  Italy  to  seek  their  fortune. 
They  found  a  patron  in  Torquemada,  the  learned 
Spaniard,  then  abbot  of  one  of  the  monasteries  of  the 
little  mountain  town  of  Subiaco,near  Rome, where  they 
issued  the  first  book  printed  south  of  the  Alps — the 
Latin  grammar  of  Donatus.  The  new  invention  met 
with  scant  favor  at  first  from  the  wealthy  connoisseurs, 
to  whom  a  printed  book  seemed  to  exhale  that  odor  of 
Philistinism  which  still  hangs  faintly  around  the 
type-written  letter.  And  so  the  first  adventurers  of 
the  press  made  no  fortunes ;  they  only  unlocked  the 
treasures  of  learning  for  the  common  people  and 
helped  to  give  arms  against  tyrants  to  every  friend 
of  truth  and  liberty  in  Europe. 

But  Germany  was  not  only  a  part  of  the  invisible 
monarchy,  the  Church,  and  united  by  her  merchants 
to  the  confederacy  of  commerce.  She  was  also  by 
her  universities  a  member  of  the  republic  of  letters. 
The  universities  of  the  middle  ages  formed  one  body, 
speaking  one  language,  for  all  lectures  were  given 
and  all  theses  written  in  Latin.  Students  passed 
freely  from  one  to  the  other,  and  nothing  could, 
therefore,  influence  the  universities  of  one  land  with- 
out in  time  influencing  those  of  other  lands.  The 
new  spirit  and  method  of  study  were  carried  from 
Italy  to  Germany,  just  as  the  new  method  of  German 
criticism  in  this  century  was  brought  from  Germany 
to  England  and  America,by  the  students  and  younger 
professors.  So  when  Peter  Luder,  a  wandering 
scholar,  a  bemoostes  Haupt,  who  had  been  a  long 


1 86  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

time  acquiring  a  somewhat  mythical  degree  from 
some  university  whose  name  was  not  mentioned, 
drifted  back  from  Italy  to  Heidelberg  in  1456,  he 
found  things  partly  ready  for  him.  It  was  not  so 
much  that  the  Faculty  of  Arts  had  just  purchased 
fifty-six  volumes  of  Latin  classics  and  the  works  of 
Petrarch  as  that  the  students  had  an  inkling  of  some 
new  method  in  the  air  of  learning.  The  professors 
would  not  give  the  disreputable-looking  man,  whose 
antecedents  were  unknown,  any  recognition.  But 
the  Pfalzgraf  granted  him  a  small  pension  and  the 
right  to  lecture  on  the  Humanities.  Nobody  came 
to  his  course  on  Seneca.  And  so  he  struck  another 
note.  One  side  of  the  writing  of  the  Humanists,  the 
pagan  feeling  that  whatever  pleases  is  permitted,  was 
no  new  thing.  It  belongs  to  human  nature,  and  the 
rediscovery  of  classic  literature  only  gave  it  free  rein. 
It  had  found  expression  already  in  poems  which, 
though  written  years  before  the  birth  of  Petrarch, 
"  foreshadowed  the  mental  and  moral  attitude  which 
Europe  was  destined  to  assume  when  Italy  through 
Humanism  gave  its  tone  to  the  Renascence."  These 
were  the  songs  of  the  wandering  scholars,  some  of 
whose  lineal  descendants,  more  decently  phrased,  are 
still  to  be  found  in  the  German  Commercebilcher. 
The  spirit  of  Horace  and  Ovid  had  long  ruled  among 
their  lyrics,  and  when  Luder  announced  a  course  on 
Ovid's  "  Art  of  Love  "  he  found  hearers.  It  is  little  to 
be  wondered  at,  however,  that  the  faculty  turned  the 
cold  shoulder  on  so  scandalous  a  colleague,  and  after 
borrowing  from  everybody  who  would  lend  him  a 
couple  of  florins,  the  poor  apostle  of  poetry  wandered 


New  Schools  and  Universities.         187 

off  to  other  universities,  turning  up  successively  at 
Erfurt,  Leipzig,  Padua,  and  Basle.  It  was  at  Leip- 
zig that  he  seems  to  have  had  the  most  success.  For, 
though  in  his  introduction  to  the  course  of  three  les- 
sons that  was  to  free  his  hearers  from  "  kitchen 
Latin  "  he  put  an  accusative  instead  of  a  dative,  a 
band  of  young  ne'er-do-weels  with  tastes  for  the  New 
Learning  gathered  round  him  half  in  joke.  Among 
them  was  Hartmann  Schedel,  nephew  of  the  learned 
physician  of  Augsburg. 

But  of  course  such  vagabonds  of  Humanism  as 
Luder  were  only  signs,  not  causes,  of  the  times.  And 
a  movement  whose  sources  are  too  deep  to  be  traced 
was  stirring  in  German  education.  In  sixty  years* 
from  1348  to  1409,  German  states  and  cities  had 
founded  seven  universities.  A  century  later  a 
similar  movement  began,  in  1456,  that  founded 
eight  new  universities  in  twenty  years.  Still  more 
remarkable  was  the  activity  in  the  founding  and  de- 
velopment of  city  schools,  which  began  in  the  middle 
of  the  century,  until  Schlettstadt,  Deventer,  Miin- 
ster,  Emmerich,  Alkmaar,  Zwolle,  had  flourishing 
high  schools.  The  two  largest  of  these  were  Schlett- 
stadt and  Deventer,  one  in  the  southern  Rhine  coun- 
try and  the  other  in  the  lowlands ;  for  the  stream  of 
learning  seems  to  have  followed  that  river  from  the 
Alps  to  its  mouth.  Under  Hegius,  Deventer  rose  to 
two  thousand  scholars.  The  first  master  of  Schlett- 
stadt, which  increased  to  nine  hundred  scholars,  was 
Ludwig  Dringenberg,  an  old-fashioned  Latinist, 
capable  of  breaking  several  rules  of  syntax  in  a  sin- 
gle line,  but  a  hard-working  teacher  with  the  knack 


1 88  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  making  his  scholars  love  learning,  and  withal  a 
conservative  with  an  open  mind.  A  man  of  piety  as 
well  as  wit,  he  took  alarm,  perhaps  at  such  phenom- 
ena of  the  spirit  of  the  times  as  Luder's  lectures  on 
the  "  Art  of  Love,"  and  proposed  to  abandon  letters 
as  unholy  and  enter  a  convent.  He  wrote  to  Gossem- 
brot,  the  learned  Augsburg  merchant,  about  it,  and 
was  won  by  the  answer  to  work  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century  more,  until  his  death.  It  was  among  the 
boys  of  such  new  schools  that  the  New  Learning 
found  its  adherents. 

This  influence  of  the  breath  of  a  new  spirit,  whose 
stirrings  were  faintly  felt  to  the  remotest  confines  of 
the  European  republic  of  learning,  can  be  seen  in  two 
churchmen  of  similar  name  and  not  dissimilar  char- 
acter and  labors,  Johann  Wessel  (about  1420-89)  and 
Johann  of  Wesel  (year  of  birth  unknown,  died  an  old 
man  in  1481).  Johann  Wessel  was  educated  at  the 
city  school  of  Zwolle,  where  as  a  poor  scholar  he 
probably  received  the  care  of  the  inmates  of  the 
neighboring  convent  of  the  Brothers  of  the  Common 
Life.1  He  entered  the  University  of  Cologne,  where 
he  found  some  monks  who  had  fled  from  Greece  be- 
fore the  Turk.  From  them  he  took  private  lessons 
in  Greek,  and,  probably  from  learned  Jews,  lessons  in 
Hebrew.  From  Cologne  he  went  to  Paris,  where  he 
stayed  some  sixteen  years  without  official  position, 
but  regarded  as  one  of  the  ornaments  of  the  Univer- 
sity. He  entered  into  correspondence  with  Cardinal 

1  The  common  statement  that  the  reform  in  methods  of  education 
owed  much  to  them,  and  especially  to  the  influence  of  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  rests  on  entirely  insufficient  evidence  and  does  not  accord 
with  his  work  or  character. 


Johann  Wessel.  189 

Bessarion,  and  visited  Rome  in  1471.  Sixtus  IV., 
whom  he  had  known  in  France  as  cardinal,  is  said  to 
have  told  him  to  ask  any  favor  he  would.  To  the 
surprise  of  the  court,  he  asked,  not  a  bishopric  or 
other  office,  but  a  manuscript  of  the  Greek  and  He- 
brew Scriptures  from  the  Vatican  library.  For 
Wessel  cared  more  for  the  Bible  than  for  anything 
else  in  the  world,  and  declared  that  the  Gospel  was 
the  source  of  religion  and  theology.  It  was  this 
desire  to  return  to  the  historical  origins  of  Chris- 
tianity, which  he  had  gained  from  Humanism,  joined 
to  a  sense  of  the  value  of  the  individual  soul,  doubt- 
less strengthened  by  his  boyish  intimacy  with  the 
Brothers  of  the  Common  Life  at  Zwolle,  which  sug- 
gested his  criticism  not  only  of  the  abuses  of  the 
Church,  but  of  the  prevalent  ideas  of  religion.  His 
writings  maintain  that  religion  consists,  not  in  out- 
ward ceremonies,  but  in  faith.  He  emphasized  the 
inward  marks  of  membership  in  the  true  Church  of 
God,  the  desire  for  holiness,  love  to  one's  neighbor, 
obedience  to  Christ.  For  the  Church,  like  religion, 
rests  on  the  Gospel,  and  therefore  both  Pope  and 
Council  can  err.  Only  as  the  Pope  teaches  and 
commends  the  truth  and  law  of  the  Gospel  is  he  to 
be  obeyed.  For,  after  all,  he  is  only  the  defender 
of  order.  In  matters  of  faith  he  has  no  authority. 
These  ideas,  which  he  had  doubtless  been  commu- 
nicating orally  during  the  thirty  years  of  his  brilliant 
academic  life,  he  committed  to  writing  during  his  last 
ten  years,  which  he  spent  in  retirement  at  his  native 
place.  The  writings  were  passed  around  among  the 
large  circle  of  friends,  admirers,  and  scholars  with 


1 90  The  Age  of  the  Renasce  nee. 

whom  he  stood  in  correspondence.  Such  a  private 
circulation  aroused  no  special  hostility  on  the  part  of 
the  orthodox  party,  who  read  little,  and  it  was  not 
till  after  his  death  that  his  tractate  against  absolu- 
tion and  indulgences  was  attacked  as  heretical. 

Very  different  was  the  fate  of  Johann  of  Wesel, 
who  first  appears  (1445-56)  as  a  professor  of  philos- 
ophy and  theology  at  the  University  of  Erfurt,  where 
his  influence  was  so  great  that  fifty  years  later  young 
Martin  Luther  wrote  that  he  found  his  ideas  and 
writings  still  ruling  the  University.  While  in  this 
position  he  wrote,  among  other  things,  a  tractate 
against  indulgences,  which  seems  to  have  excited 
little  attention  at  the  time.  He  was  called  in  1460 
to  become  preacher  in  a  city  of  the  Upper  Rhine, 
and  there  his  views,  similar  to  those  of  Wessel,  began 
to  make  trouble  for  him.  The  words  of  the  preacher 
were  heard  by  those  who  read  little,  and  his  nervous 
phrases,  meant  for  the  common  people,  made  his 
meaning  plain  and  offensive  to  the  dullest  and  most 
jealous  supporter  of  things  as  they  were  or  ideas  as 
they  had  been.  It  was  a  scandal  to  the  orthodox 
when  he  said,  for  instance,  in  preaching  against  put- 
ting undue  confidence  in  outward  ceremonies,  that 
"  if  Peter  advised  fasting,  he  only  did  it  to  help  the 
sale  of  his  fish,"  or  that  "  consecrated  oil  [used  in  the 
unction  of  the  dying]  is  no  better  than  the  oil  one 
eats  at  the  table."  So  it  came  to  pass  that  in  1479 
he  was  called  before  an  ecclesiastical  court  to  answer 
a  charge  of  heresy.  He  appeared  leaning  on  a  staff 
and  supported  by  two  monks.  He  stood  manfully 
at  first,  asserting  that  "  if  every  one  should  fall  away 


Germany  and  Italy.  191 

from  Christ,  I  alone  will  honor  Christ  and  be  a  Chris- 
tian " ;  but  in  the  end  he  confessed  his  errors,  sub- 
mitted to  the  judgment  of  the  Church,  and  asked  for 
mercy.  Two  years  afterward  he  died  in  prison. 
Forty  years  later  a  court  met  within  a  few  miles  of 
the  same  place,  and  the  refusal  of  another  professor 
to  recant  his  errors  began  in  Europe  a  hundred  years 
of  religious  war. 

Thus  through  trade,  the  Church,  and  the  institu- 
tions of  learning  those  first  influences  of  Humanism 
came  in  by  which  Germany  was  being  prepared  for 
the  rapid  growth  of  the  next  thirty  years.  These 
agencies  were  of  course  at  work  in  other  lands ;  but 
in  all  those  matters  Germany  had  especially  intimate 
relations  with  Italy.  Her  people  were  converted  late 
in  European  history  by  Papal  missionaries,  and  her 
metropolitans  were  canonically  dependent  on  the 
Pope.  Her  emperors  were  kings  of  Rome,  and  when 
crowned  at  Aachen  were  expected  to  go  to  Italy  to 
receive  two  more  crowns.  Over  the  Brenner  Pass 
across  Tyrol  poured  the  steady  stream  of  an  old- 
established  traffic  between  the  free  cities  of  North  and 
South.  And  yet  there  is  another  reason  which  can 
be  imagined  for  the  rapid  assimilation  of  Humanism 
,by  Germany  and  the  quick  moulding  of  the  new  im- 
pulse into  a  new  German  Humanism  with  an  original 
national  genius.  The  Germans,  with  all  their  love  of 
home,  have  always  been  ready  to  seek  and  to  use 
foreign  things.  They  have  never  been  seamen  and 
so  they  have  not  been  given,  like  the  French,  Span- 
iards, and  English,  to  exploration ;  but  they  are  the 
greatest  travellers  in  Europe.  More  Germans  visit 


192  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Switzerland  and  Rome  than  any  other  people,  and 
the  increase  of  travel  promises  to  make  them  in  a 
short  time  the  most  numerous  foreign  visitors  to 
Paris.  This  pleasure  of  travel  finds  expression  in  the 
folk-songs  that  voice  the  energy,  curiosity,  and  poetic 
feeling  which  make  the  Wanderlust.  And  it  may  be 
that  the  creation  by  German  speech  of  this  unique 
word  gives  the  key  to  the  rapid  assimilation  of 
Italian  Humanism  by  the  German  race.  -,. 


PERIOD    II. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  MAN   OF  THE   RENASCENCE  ON  THE   THRONE 
OF    ST.  PETER — SIXTUS   IV.,  THE   TERRIBLE. 

T  the  death  of  Paul  II.  a  new  generation 
of  Popes  began.  Christendom  had  been 
reunited  at  the  death-bed  of  Eugenius, 
and  the  policy  of  his  successors  had  moved 
within  certain  fixed  limits.  Nicholas,  the 
doctor  of  theology,  who  loved  literature  and  the  arts, 
Calixtus,  the  friend  of  the  monks,  Pius,  the  classical 
secretary  and  accomplished  diplomat,  had  agreed  in 
limiting  the  activities  of  their  pontificates  within  ec- 
clesiastical lines ;  for  their  crusading  zeal  belonged  to 
the  duties  which  for  generations  men  had  assigned  to 
the  Papacy. 

Paul  II.,  the  splendor-loving  nepot,  though  a 
transition  character,  resembled  the  generation  he 
closed  in  that  his  interest  in  material  things  was 
confined  to  the  patrimonium.  He  displayed  little 
thought  of  gaining  new  cities  or  territories,  and  kept 
aloof  from  all  ambitious  mingling  in  the  politics  of 
Italy  or  the  diplomacy  of  Europe.  But  these  four 
were  succeeded  by  a  line  of  Pontiffs  who  involved 
the  Church  in  foreign  politics  and  brought  on  the 
M  193 


194  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

closing  catastrophy  of  the  Renascence  Papacy,  the 
sack  of  Rome  by  the  Lutheran  army  of  an  orthodox 
Catholic  emperor. 

These  seven  men  are  perhaps  more  visibly  the 
product  of  their  times  than  the  wearers  of  the  tiara 
of  any  age  of  Papal  history.  In  spite  of  their  marked 
individuality,  they  show  an  unmistakable  community 
of  traits.  They  were  completely  dominated  by  the 
ideals  of  contemporary  Italian  society ;  they  drew 
their  income  as  successors  of  St.  Peter;  they  used  the 
stately  ceremonials  of  their  office,  and  believed  in  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church  after  their  fashion;  but  their 
interest  centred  on  their  power  as  Italian  princes, 
and  their  virtues  and  vices  were  those  of  their  class. 
They  were  men  of  the  Renascence  on  the  throne  of 
the  Papacy,  and  the  office  was  to  them  only  a  means 
to  accomplish  personal  ends.  Of  the  seven  the 
character  of  Leo  X.  was  the  least  incongruous 
with  his  title  of  Vicar  of  Christ,  but  the  epigram  of 
Sarpi  upon  him  is  fair:  "  He  would  have  been  a  per- 
fect Pope  if  he  had  combined  with  his  many  fine 
qualities  some  knowledge  of  the  affairs  of  religion 
and  a  greater  inclination  to  piety,  for  neither  of  which 
he  manifested  much  concern." 

In  order  to  understand  the  policy  of  these  Popes, 
or  do  justice  to  their  characters,  it  is  needful  to  per- 
ceive the  animating  motive  of  their  age.  It  was 
the  passionate  desire  for  a  distinction  entirely 
personal.  We  have  seen  how  in  the  writings  of 
Petrarch  the  self-consciousness  of  the  individual 
appears.  The  thirst  for  distinction  became  a  means 
and  an  effect  of  its  development,  and  from  the  pres- 


The  Love  of  Fame.  195 

sure  of  political  and  social  circumstances,  the  influ- 
ence of  the  classic  writers,  and  the  process  by  which 
every  class  of  characters  moulded  by  the  spirit  of  an 
age  tends  to  produce  the  extremest  type  possible,  a 
new  passion  was  trained  on  the  hearts  of  men — the 
modern  desire  for  fame.  We  do  not  know  the  names 
of  the  architects  of  the  mediaeval  cathedrals,  and  they 
took  no  precautions  against  that  forgetfulness.  When 
Froissart  wrote  his  account  of  the  great  knights  of 
his  day  he  addressed  it  to  their  peers,  and  rightly 
assumed  their  entire  indifference  to  the  opinion  of 
the  mass  of  men,  peasants  and  burghers.  But  in 
Italy,  by  the  second  generation  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury there  existed  a  common  desire  for  admiration 
which  had  no  reference  to  tradition,  was  unlimited  by 
class  feeling,  and  appealed  to  the  age  and  to  poster- 
ity. Among  the  ancient  Romans,  where  it  sought 
its  models,  this  love  of  fame  had  been  modified  by 
the  pressure  of  a  great  legal  system,  working  by  its 
own  momentum,  and  the  presence  of  institutions  too 
venerable  to  remain  unfelt.  Even  Julius  rejoiced 
that  he  was  a  Roman;  and  the  ideal  of  the  judgment- 
seat  of  Caesar  awed  at  times  the  worst  of  the  emper- 
ors. But  the  corruption  of  politics  in  most  of  the 
smaller  states  of  Italy  had  gone  so  far  in  the  fifteenth 
century  that  the  very  idea  of  the  commonwealth  was 
lost,  liberty  only  the  war-cry  of  a  faction,  and  law 
looked  on  as  the  will  of  those  in  power.  Whole 
sections  of  the  Italian  people  were  manifestly  in- 
capable of  any  stable  government  except  tyranny. 

Amid  this  environment  the  love  of  fame  produced 
strange  results.     In  many  otherwise  noble  and  gen- 


196  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

tie  natures  the  sense  of  duty  seems  to  have  atrophied, 
and,  as  a  consequence  of  the  paralysis  of  conscience, 
the  ideal  of  religion  became  in  many  minds  divorced 
from  morality  in  a  way  difficult  for  us  to  understand. 
There  arose  an  ambition  which,  positing  purely  per- 
sonal ends,  disregarded,  apparently  without  a  pang, 
every  question  of  the  right  or  wrong  of  its  means: 
and  this,  not  under  the  impulse  of  passion,  but  as  a 
calm  and  reasonable  assumption.  Such  an  undefined 
ambition  produced  among  the  best  of  the  men  it 
dominated  a  many-sided  development  of  personal 
skill,  a  power  and  an  independence  of  character  sel- 
dom matched.  In  the  worst  it  bred  a  shameless  and 
bestial  egotism. 

Francesco  Sforza,  one  of  the  models  of  Italian 
ambition  in  the  fifteenth  century,  is  also  one  of  its 
most  favorable  representatives.  He  was  the  illegiti- 
mate son  of  that  peasant  Jacopo  Attendolo,  nicknamed 
Sforza,  or  "  the  Stubborn  Fellow,"  who,  at  twelve 
years  of  age,  joined  a  company  of  free-lances  and 
became  the  most  distinguished  soldier  of  the  day. 
The  boy  was  brought  up  in  arms  according  to  three 
precepts :  "  Let  other  men's  wives  alone ;  strike  none 
of  your  followers ;  never  ride  a  hard-mouthed  horse." 
At  the  death  of  his  father,  drowned  in  leading  his 
men  through  a  river,  Francesco  was  twenty-three. 
He  called  together  the  soldiers,  swore  them  to  him- 
self, and  with  their  aid  secured  the  inheritance  of  all 
his  father's  castles.  The  Queen  of  Naples  took  him 
into  service,  and  in  twenty-two  victorious  battles  he 
proved  himself  the  first  soldier  of  Italy.  In  1441  he 
was  leader  of  the  army  of  Venice  against  Filippo 


The  Cynosure  of  Italy.  197 

0 

Maria  Visconti,  Duke  of  Milan.  The  Duke's  gene- 
rals had  Sforza  penned  up  in  a  position  where  he 
could  neither  fight  nor  retreat  and  ruin  seemed  near. 
One  night  the  curtain  of  his  tent  was  raised,  and  a 
messenger  appeared  to  offer  him  the  hand  of  the 
Duke's  daughter.  The  crafty  tyrant  feared  lest  too 
complete  a  victory  should  deliver  him,  helpless,  into 
the  power  of  his  own  mercenaries.  Sforza  accepted, 
and  when  revolution  followed  the  death  of  Filippo, 
entered  the  service  of  the  Republic  of  Milan.  For 
Venice  would  not  consent  to  recognize  the  new  sis- 
ter Republic,  except  under  hard  conditions,  and  Milan 
needed  soldiers.  He  won  two  great  victories,  and 
then  entered  into  agreement  with  the  Venetians  to 
make  peace,  on  condition  of  their  aid  in  becoming 
Duke  of  Milan.  The  city,  divided  into  bitter  factions 
which  had  been  fighting  to  the  death  ever  since  the 
Republic  was  proclaimed,  made  no  long  resistance. 
Their  burghers  would  not  fight,  except  with  each 
other ;  and  though  Venice  fell  away  from  Sforza  and 
offered  help,  a  sudden  mob  killed  the  ambassador 
and  opened  the  gates.  In  February,  1450,  the  ille- 
gitimate son  of  a  peasant  became  ruler  of  one  of  the 
great  states  of  Italy.  Pius  II.  wrote  that  when 
Sforza  came  to  the  Congress  of  Princes  in  Mantua, 
nine  years  later,  he  was  the  most  admired  man  in 
Italy :  "  Calm  and  affable  in  conversation,  princely 
in  his  whole  bearing,  with  a  combination  of  bodily 
and  intellectual  gifts  unrivalled  in  our  time,  uncon- 
quered  on  the  battle-field."  Such  a  man, whose  power 
rested  on  no  institutions  and  recognized  no  laws, 
a  mercenary  soldier  who  had  made  a  brilliant  career 


198  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

by  strength,  skill,  and  unblushing  treachery,  was  for 
Italy  the  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form. 

When  the  Conclave  met  after  the  death  of  Paul  II., 
in  August,  1471,  they  chose  Francesco  della  Rovere, 
who  took  the  title  of  Sixtus  IV.  He  was  born  of 
poor  parents  in  1414,  became  a  Franciscan  monk 
early  in  life,  had  been  professor  successively  at  Bo- 
logna, Pavia,  Siena,  Florence,  and  Perugia,  rose  to 
be  General  of  his  order  in  1464,  and  by  the  favor  of 
Bessarion,  the  learned  Greek,  was  made  cardinal  in 
1467. 

The  influence  to  which  he  owed  his  election  was 
made  plain  by  the  fact  that  Cardinal  Borgia,  the 
nephew  of  Calixtus  III.,  Orsini,  of  the  great  Roman 
family,  and  Gonzaga,  of  the  noble  house  of  Mantua, 
were  promoted  and  rewarded  as  soon  as  he  became 
Pope.  But  the  new  Pope  kept  his  best  rewards,  not 
for  the  people  who  made  him,  but  for  those  he  made. 
At  the  first  consistory  he  began  to  give  red  hats  to 
his  nephews,  six  of  whom  became  Princes  of  the 
Church.  The  two  first  in  whose  favor  he  broke  the 
Capitulation  of  the  Conclave,  which  all  the  Popes  for 
forty  years  had  signed  and  promptly  broken,  were 
Giuliano  Rovere  and  Pietro  Riario.  Giuliano  was 
already  Bishop  of  Carpentras,  and  he  was  made  in 
addition  Archbishop  of  Bologna,  Bishop  of  Lausanne, 
Coutance,  Viviers,  and  Mende,  in  Savoy  and  France, 
and  of  Ostia  and  Velletri  in  Italy,  Abbot  of  Nonantola, 
Grottoferrata,  and  a  few  other  places.  Pietro  Riario, 
also  a  young  man  in  the  twenties,  called  the  son  of 
the  Pope's  sister,  but  generally  reported  to  be  his 
own  son,  was  provided  for  even  more  thoroughly. 


The  Luxurious  Nepot.  199 

He  lost  no  time  in  using  his  good  fortune,  plunged 
into  every  kind  of  debauchery,  and  displayed  a  lux- 
ury that  made  even  Rome  wonder.  When  the 
young  daughter  of  the  King  of  Naples  came  to  Rome 
on  her  way  to  her  husband,  the  Duke  of  Ferrara, 
Pietro  received  her  in  his  palace.  Every  wall  was 
covered  with  costly  tapestry ;  nothing  but  was  of 
gold  or  silver,  silk  or  satin.  And  the  great  banquet 
he  gave  matched  the  feasts  of  Lucullus.  The  host 
sat  by  the  side  of  the  Princess  in  his  purple  gown, 
while  under  the  command  of  a  seneschal,  who  changed 
his  dress  four  times  during  the  feast,  a  host  of  at- 
tendants bore  in  on  huge  platters  every  beast  of  the 
field  and  bird  of  the  air  cooked  whole,  from  peacocks 
in  their  feathers  to  a  roasted  bear  in  his  skin  with  a 
staff  in  his  mouth.  There  were  huge  castles  of  con- 
*  fectionery  and  ships  of  sweetmeats,  tasted  by  the 
guests  and  then  broken  and  flung  to  the  crowd  that 
filled  the  place  in  front  of  the  palace.  And  a  whole 
flock  of  singers  and  musicians  made  merry  for  the 
feast  of  this  young  monk  of  St.  Francis  who  was  a 
prince  of  the  Church.  But  in  two  years  it  was  over. 
The  nepot  died  at  twenty-eight,  worn  out  by  ex- 
cesses. He  had  spent  two  hundred  thousand  florins 
and  left  a  great  mass  of  debts.  An  unknown  satirist 
hung  on  his  grave  an  epitaph  bidding  "  every  wick- 
edness and  all  scoundrels  depart  now  from  Italy,  for 
the  accursed  pest  of  the  Southland  is  dead." 

But  plenty  of  brothers  and  cousins  were  left  to 
rejoice  the  heart  of  Sixtus.  Not  all  of  these  went 
into  the  Church,  and  the  Pope  began  to  carve  out 
positions  for  them  by  politics  and  war.  One  was 


2oo  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

married  to  a  daughter  of  the  King  of  Naples  in  ex- 
change for  some  feudal  rights  which  the  owner  owed 
the  Chair  of  St.  Peter.  Another  was  married  to  the 
daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Milan  and  made  Captain- 
general  of  the  Church.  It  was  through  this  Girolamo 
that  the  Pope  became  involved  in  bloody  politics  that 
made  all  Italy  hate  him.  Giuliano  and  Lorenzo  de' 
Medici,  grandsons  of  Cosimo,  were  rulers  of  Florence 
without  the  name.  And  some  fanatic  lovers  of  lib- 
erty and  haters  of  the  house  of  Medici  were  ready 
tools  of  the  ambition  of  Girolamo  and  Sixtus ;  for  the 
Medici  stood  against  their  plans  to  conquer  great 
possessions  for  the  house  of  Riario  in  Romagna.  A 
conspiracy  was  planned  in  the  Vatican  itself,  and  the 
two  brothers  were  attacked  by  assassins  in  the  cathe- 
dral at  Florence  at  the  very  moment  of  the  elevation 
of  the  host.  Giuliano  was  killed  on  the  spot.  Lo- 
renzo escaped  into  the  sacristy,  slightly  wounded. 
But  there  was  no  rising  of  the  people  for  "  liberty," 
as  the  conspirators  expected.  Rather,  the  whole 
city  shouted  the  cry  of  the  house  of  Medici  and 
strung  up  every  one  concerned  in  a  row  along  the 
windows  of  the  Palace  of  Justice,  among  them  the 
Archbishop  of  Pisa.  Sixtus  was  furious  at  the  fail- 
ure. When  the  news  came,  Girolamo  insulted  the 
Florentine  ambassador  in  Rome  by  bursting  into  his 
palace  and  dragging  him  to  the  Vatican  under  arrest. 
And  the  Pope  excommunicated  the  Medici  and  the 
Signory  of  Florence,  because  the  people  of  the  city 
had  laid  violent  hands  on  clergymen,  to  the  great  in- 
sult of  the  Christian  religion.  He  followed  this  by 
the  interdict  and  war.  The  Florentines  compelled 


The  Wars  of  Sixtus.  201 

their  clergy  to  say  mass,  and  appealed  to  a  Council 
and  the  world.  France  and  the  leading  states  of 
Italy  entered  into  league  with  the  Republic,  and  the 
ambassadors  of  the  Emperor  protested  to  the  Pope ; 
but  the  fighting  went  on,  and  only  the  sudden  land- 
ing of  the  Turk  in  Italy  forced  Sixtus  to  peace. 

An  expedition  from  Rhodes  had  seized  Otranto 
on  the  2 1st  of  August,  and  fear  drove  all  the  states 
of  Italy,  France,  Hungary,  and  the  Emperor  into  a 
great  league  against  the  infidel.  It  was  needless,  for 
Mohammed  II.,  the  conqueror  of  Constantinople,  died 
in  1481,  and  two  of  his  sons  began  to  fight  for  his 
throne.  Sixtus,  disregarding  the  chance  of  laming 
the  foe  of  Christendom,  allowed  the  allied  fleet  of 
Italy  and  Spain  to  break  up,  and  plunged  once  more 
into  his  plans  for  the  house  of  Rovere.  He  renewed 
the  attempt  to  increase  his  power  in  the  Romagna, 
and  induced  the  Venetians  to  join  him  in  trying  to 
conquer  Ferrara,  promising  the  city  to  them,  but 
plotting  to  keep  it  for  his  nephew.  But  all  the  rest 
of  Italy  rallied  to  the  side  of  Hercules,  the  Duke, 
and  the  great  faction  of  the  Colonna  rose  in  Rome 
against  the  Pope,  because  he  favored  their  foes,  the 
Orsini.  The  disappointed  Sixtus,  checkmated  at  his 
own  game,  made  peace  within  the  year.  But  it  was 
scarcely  a  year  later  when  a  frightful  civil  feud  broke 
out  between  the  Orsini,  backed  by  Girolamo  Riario, 
and  the  Colonna.  The  streets  of  Rome  were  filled 
with  murder  arid  plundering,  while  the  fields  of  the 
Campagna  were  wasted  with  fire  and  sword.  Already 
Rome  had  seen  the  Lateran  filled  with  lounging  sol- 
diers, who  played  cards  and  dice  in  the  sacristy,  on 


2O2  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

the  top  of  the  chest  in  which  were  packed  the  relics 
of  the  saints  and  the  vessels  of  the  mass.  And  now, 
when  his  nephew  had  sworn  to  lay  every  castle  of 
his  foes  level  with  the  ground,  the  Vicar  of  Christ,  in 
the  robes  of  his  office,  publicly  blessed  the  cannons 
of  civil  war.  The  death  of  the  head  of  the  Colonna 
marked  the  triumph  of  the  successor  of  St.  Peter. 
One  annalist  reports  that  his  mother  opened  the 
coffin  in  which  the  body,  scarred  with  torture,  was 
borne  to  her,  lifted  by  the  hair  the  head  which  had 
fallen  under  the  axe,  and  cried  aloud :  "  Behold  the 
faithfulness  of  Pope  Sixtus.  He  promised  me  the 
life  of  my  son." 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  in  all  these  wars  to 
make  his  family  rich  and  powerful  Sixtus  was  a  fee- 
ble old  man,  used  as  a  tool  by  greedy  nepots.  On 
the  contrary,  the  will  and  craft  of  it  were  more  his 
than  theirs.  Everywhere  the  big  tyrants  were  try- 
ing to  swallow  up  the  little  ones,  who  through  all 
Italy  had  overthrown  the  liberties  of  the  cities ;  and 
Sixtus  saw  in  the  office  of  the  Pope  the  chance  to 
establish  the  power  and  riches  of  the  della  Rovere. 

Like  all  the  other  heads  of  dynasties  in  his  day,  he 
sought  to  find  glory  in  the  patronage  of  letters  and 
art.  The  ex-university  professor  was  a  strong  sup- 
porter of  the  Roman  Academy,  persecuted  by  his 
predecessor;  Pomponius  Leto,  its  head,  became  one 
of  the  most  distinguished  men  of  Rome.  Even  be- 
fore he  made  his  nephews  cardinals  Sixtus  began  to 
build  a  library.  When  it  was  finished  he  appointed 
as  librarian  that  Platina,  the  historian,  who  had  been 
tortured  by  Paul  to  wring  out  the  supposed  secrets 


Sixtus  and  Rome.  203 

of  the  Academy.  He  loved  to  collect  books,  for 
which  his  favorite  binding  was  ornamented  by  niello- 
work.  For  he  was  a  great  patron  of  the  workers  in 
gold,  silver,  and  bronze,  though  he  was  equally  fond 
of  the  art  of  the  decorator  of  majolica.  He  built 
largely  on  bridges,  aqueducts,  walls,  and  palaces, 
and  some  of  his  churches  are  among  the  ornaments 
of  Rome.  Most  noted  of  all  is  the  Sistine  Chapel, 
for  whose  decoration  he  employed  all  the  great  mas- 
ters of  Tuscany.  For  though  he  himself  liked  the 
pictures  of  Cosimo  Rosselli  because  he  used  plenty  of 
gold  in  his  coloring,  he  called  to  his  court  all  the 
best  artists  of  the  day. 

How  much  the  remark  of  that  crafty  tyrant,  Fer- 
rante  of  Naples,  that  narrow  and  crooked  streets  gave 
great  chances  for  insurrection,  had  to  do  with  his  plan 
for  Haussmannizing  Rome  1  is  hard  to  say.  At  all 
events,  his  building  rules  for  the  city  made  and  kept 
them  wider,  let  in  light  by  tearing  down  balconies, 
and  began  to  cure  the  worst  of  their  filth  by  laying 
pavements.  He  would  not  let  the  city  of  the  della 
Rovere  be  inferior  to  the  residences  of  the  other  great 
families  of  the  day. 

But  though  he  widened  the  streets  of  Rome,  he 
did  not  improve  what  went  on  in  them.  The  inten- 
sity which  Paul  II.  showed  in  policing  the  city  Six- 
tus used  only  in  political  wars.  There  was  continual 
riot  and  bloodshed  in  Rome.  In  January,  1483, 
there  died  the  Papal  Chamberlain,  one  of  the  richest 
and  most  learned  of  the  cardinals.  For  more  than 

1  Baron  Haussmann  straightened  the  streets  of  Paris  under  Napo- 
leon III.  for  looks  and  artillery. 


2O4  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

thirty  years  he  had  lived  in  Rome,  a  patron  of  art 
and  letters,  adorning  the  city  with  many  buildings, 
and  leading  a  life  of  stately  hospitality,  surrounded 
by  his  illegitimate  children,  who  passed  for  the  sons 
of  his  brother.  When  he  was  dying  one  of  the  noble 
family  into  which  his  daughter  was  married  came  into 
the  palace  by  way  of  the  church  which  was  next  to 
it,  packed  up  thirty  thousand  florins  worth  of  silver 
plate,  and  went  off  to  Venice  with  his  plunder.  The 
next  day,  when  the  body  was  being  carried  by  the 
clergy  of  one  church  to  San  Agostino,  which  he  had 
rebuilt,  the  bearers  and  the  monks  who  were  to  re- 
ceive the  dead  fought  with  the  torches  and  candle- 
sticks of  the  procession  over  the  gold  brocade  which 
covered  the  bier.  Swords  were  drawn  on  both  sides, 
and  with  great  difficulty  the  body  was  hastily  gotten 
into  the  sacristy  while  the  fight  went  on.  When  the 
trouble  was  over  the  corpse  was  found  to  be  stripped 
of  its  costly  rings  and  every  ornament  worth  carry- 
ing away. 

In  the  midst  of  his  splendor  and  craft  death  came 
to  Sixtus  without  warning — popular  report  said  from 
a  fever  brought  on  by  wrath  that  the  peace  which 
had  been  made  between  Venice  and  the  powers  of 
Italy  had  left  his  plans  out  of  the  reckoning.  Rome 
had  suffered  frightfully  under  his  rule,  and  the  Church 
was  filled  with  threats  of  appeal  to  a  Council,  before 
which  even  Sixtus  trembled.  He  knew  his  adminis- 
tration could  not  bear  investigation,  for  it  had  been 
the  foundation  principle  of  his  finance  that  "  the  Pope 
needed  only  pen,  ink,  and  paper  to  have  any  sum  of 
money  he  wanted." 


Joy  over  Sixtusjs  Death.  205 

At  the  news  of  his  death  the  city  rose  in  wrath  and 
joy.  The  house  of  Girolamo  Riario  was  plundered 
of  everything  movable,  and  everything  breakable, 
down  to  the  marble  door-posts,  was  destroyed.  The 
magazines  of  the  Genoese  who  had  been  partners  of 
the  Pope  in  wheat  speculations  were  sacked,  and 
others  of  his  rich  friends  suffered  from  the  mob.  The 
Papal  army,  besieging  a  small  city,  broke  up  in  panic, 
abandoning  its  camp-train.  The  banished  Cardinal 
Colonna  came  back  with  two  thousand  armed  parti- 
sans and  filled  the  city  with  yet  wilder  confusion. 


PERIOD    II. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

INNOCENT  VIII.,  THE    SULTAN'S    JAILER — ALEXAN- 
DER  VI.,   THE    HANDSOME     SPANISH    NEPOT 

THE    FRENCH    INVASION. 

|HEN  the  disorder  had  become  wearisome 
even  to  those  who  took  part  in  it,  the 
Conclave  met  on  the  26th  of  August, 
1484,  and  by  the  skilful  bribery  and  wire- 
pulling of  Cardinal  Giuliano  della  Rovere, 
Sixtus's  ablest  nephew,  the  Genoese  Cardinal  of 
Molfetta  was  elected.  He  took  the  name  of  Inno- 
cent VIII.,  apparently  on  the  principle  of  lucus  a  non 
lucendo,  for  the  stately  and  handsome  man,  being  in 
Rome,  had  done  as  the  Romans  did.  A  satirist  con- 
gratulated the  city  that,  after  being  depopulated  by 
the  wars  and  slaughter  of  Sixtus,  it  was  now  to  have 
for  ruler  one  who  might  indeed  be  called  the  father 
of  his  people. 

Giuliano  della  Rovere,  the  power  behind  the  throne, 
was  not  long  in  leading  the  new  Pope  into  the  paths 
of  his  predecessor,  and  the  Papacy  backed  the  bloody 
war  of  the  feudal  barons  of  Naples  against  their 
King.  Florence  and  Milan  stood  by  the  King; 
Genoa  and  Venice  were  allies  of  the  Pope.  But  in 

206 


The  Wicked  City.  207 

less  than  a  year  the  opposition  among  the  cardinals, 
headed  by  Borgia,  the  defeated  candidate  for  the 
throne,  forced  the  Pope  to  make  peace,  and  his  allies 
the  barons  died  by  dozens  in  the  hands  of  the  exe- 
cutioners. 

Meantime  the  Papal  rule  had  broken  down  com- 
pletely, so  far  as  any  of  the  real  purposes  of  govern- 
ment were  concerned.  Rome  was  full  of  murder  and 
violence.  The  ambassador  of  the  Emperor  was 
stripped  to  his  shirt  just  outside  the  gates.  It  was 
notorious  that  gold  would  do  anything  in  the  Curia. 
Innocent  made  at  a  stroke  fifty-two  new  secretary- 
ships, which  he  sold  for  twenty-five  hundred  florins 
apiece.  He  used  up  in  retail  trade  three  hundred 
other  new  offices.  Occasionally  a  few  poor  vagabond 
criminals  were  hung  by  night,  but  public  trials  were 
a  farce  and  no  one  who  had  money  need  suffer.  An 
innkeeper  who  killed  both  his  daughters  got  free  for 
eight  hundred  florins.  The  vice-chamberlain,  being 
asked  why  so  few  people  were  punished  when  crime 
was  so  common,  answered  with  a  fine  smile,  "  God 
does  not  wish  the  death  of  the  sinner,  but  that  he 
should  live  and  pay." 

The  clergy  set  the  worst  example.  Their  houses 
were  filled  with  concubines.1  The  sacred  vessels  of 
the  churches  were  continually  being  stolen,  and  a 
wide-spread  conspiracy  to  sell  forged  Papal  bulls  was 
discovered  among  the  curial  secretaries.  Wickedness 
was  unabashed,  for  the  rulers  set  the  example  of  law- 

l  One  diarist  tells  us  that  when  the  Papal  vicar  issued  an  edict  forbid- 
ding this,  the  Pope  compelled  its  recall  at  once:  "  Propter  quod  tails 
effecta  est  vita  sacerdotum  ut  vix  reperiatur  qui  concubinam  non  re*i- 
neat  vel  Saltern  meretricem." 


2o8  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

lessness.  The  cardinals  led  in  the  dance.  Their 
houses  were  flanked  by  towers  and  raised  on  arches, 
that  the  steep  steps  might  be  defended  by  their  hun- 
dreds of  armed  retainers.  The  store-rooms  were  well 
stocked  with  powder  and  lead  for  the  arquebuses. 
When  the  princes  of  the  Church  went  abroad  they 
ruffled  it  in  silks  and  jewels,  even  wearing  swords  by 
their  sides,  and  were  followed  by  a  train  of  swagger- 
ing fellows  who  stopped  at  nothing.  The  Pope's  son 
tried  to  storm  the  house  of  a  burgher  in  broad  day- 
light in  order  to  carry  off  his  wife.  One  day  he 
burst  into  the  Vatican  in  a  rage.  Cardinal  Riario 
had  won  forty  thousand  florins  from  him  the  night 
before,  and  he  accused  him  of  cheating  in  play.  The 
Pope  ordered  Riario  to  return  the  money,  but  the 
wily  Cardinal  answered  that  he  had  already  paid  it 
over  to  the  master  builder  of  his  new  palace. 

Roderigo  Borgia,  the  richest  man  in  the  College, 
stately  and  with  a  most  persuasive  manner,  whose 
dark  eyes  were  said  to  fascinate  the  women  "  as  a 
magnet  draws  iron,"  lived  for  gallantry.  His  palace, 
the  finest  in  Rome,  was  splendidly  furnished.  The 
entrance-hall  was  hung  with  tapestries  representing 
historical  scenes.  It  opened  into  a  little  room,  also 
superbly  hung,  where  stood  a  bed  covered  with  red 
satin  under  an  alcove  painted  blue  with  stars.  In 
this  room  stood  the  great  sideboard  on  whose  shelves 
and  cornice  were  displayed  the  gold  and  silver  plate, 
a  large  collection  of  heavy  and  elaborate  pieces. 
Two  little  rooms  opened  off  this,  one  being  in  satin, 
with  Turkish  carpets  on  the  floors,  and  a  bed  covered 
with  Alexandrian  velvet.  The  other  and  richer  one 


Some  Cardinals  Households.          209 

had  the  bed  covered  with  gold  brocade,  and  a  velvet- 
covered  table  in  the  middle  surrounded  by  elabo- 
rately carved  chairs.  Ascanio  Sforza,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  the  sportsman  of  the  College,  and  aston- 
ished Rome  by  the  size  of  his  stable,  his  huge  pack 
of  hounds,  and  the  variety  of  his  superb  falcons.  A 
supper  he  gave  to  the  Prince  of  Capua  was  said  to 
have  been  like  the  feast  in  a  fairy  tale.  Giuliano  della 
Rovere,  while  he  did  not  despise  gallantry  and  pat- 
ronized art  richly,  was  the  politician  of  the  College. 
He  did  not  scruple  to  seize  a  courier  of  the  Duke  of 
Milan,  in  order  to  take  away  his  papers  by  force, 
and  exercised  such  power  that  the  ambassadors  com- 
plained :  "  One  Pope  was  enough  for  them ;  two 
were  too  many." 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  to  be  won- 
dered at  that  a  sudden  alarm  of  the  Pope's  death 
threw  the  whole  city  into  confusion.  The  shops 
were  closed  and  barricades  sprang  up  everywhere. 
The  cardinals  went  to  the  Vatican  and  immediately 
started  an  inventory.  They  found  eight  hundred 
thousand  florins  in  one  chest  and  three  hundred 
thousand  in  another.  Then  the  Pope  recovered  from 
his  swoon.  When  he  heard  what  had  been  going  on 
he  remarked,  "  I  shall  have  the  pleasure  of  going  to 
the  funerals  of  these  gentlemen  of  the  College  of 
Cardinals  before  I  die." 

There  were  three  great  public  excitements  during 
the  rule  of  Innocent.  The  first  was  the  finding  of 
the  so-called  daughter  of  Cicero.  Workmen  digging 
in  the  Campagna  opened  a  Roman  grave,  and  in  the 
beautiful  sarcophagus,  covered  by  some  preserving 


2io  The  Age  of  the  Renascence, 

fluid,  lay  the  corpse  of  a  young  girl,  her  long  black 
hair  gathered  into  a  golden  net.  She  looked  as  if 
just  dead.  And  all  Rome  was  filled  with  excitement 
when  the  body  was  brought  to  the  Capitol.  That 
enthusiasm  for  antiquity  which  was  now  the  univer- 
sal social  mode  seemed  to  be  boundless.  For  fear  of 
the  scandal  which  might  spread  from  some  open  con- 
fession of  heathenism,  the  Pope  had  the  body  secretly 
buried  again  in  the  night. 

Another  great  excitement  was  the  entry  of  Prince 
Djem.  This  son  of  Mohammed,  the  conqueror  of 
Constantinople,  fled  from  his  brother,  the  Sultan,  to 
ask  shelter  from  the  Knights  of  Rhodes.  They  held 
him  as  a  pledge  of  peace,  and  exacted  from  the  Sul- 
tan thirty-five  thousand  florins  a  year  for  holding  him 
in  prison.  They  sent  him  to  France  for  safer  keep- 
ing. Innocent  brought  him  from  France,  and  on  the 
1 3th  of  March,  1489,  he  entered  Rome  beside  the 
Pope's  son,  with  a  long  train  of  Moslems  and  Chris- 
tians riding  two  and  two  behind.  The  precious  pris- 
oner lived  for  years  in  the  Pope's  care,  while  his 
brother  with  one  hand  paid  tribute  to  the  Pope  for 
keeping  him,  and  with  the  other  hired  assassins  to 
put  him  out  of  the  way.  A  letter  of  Andrea  Man- 
tegna,  the  painter,  describes  this  strange  inmate  of 
the  Vatican :  "  The  brother  of  the  Sultan  lives  here 
in  the  palace.  Sometimes  he  comes  to  dine  where 
I  am  painting,  and  for  a  barbarian  he  behaves  very 
well.  His  bearing  is  full  of  a  majestic  pride.  He 
does  not  uncover  his  head,  so  that  everybody  else 
keeps  on  his  hat  before  him.  He  eats  five  times  a 
day,  and  sleeps  just  as  often.  Before  eating  he 


The  Pope  and  the  Sultan.  2 1 1 

drinks  sugared  water.  His  walk  is  that  of  an  ele- 
phant, his  movements  as  elegant  as  those  of  a  big  Ve- 
netian wine-cask.  His  servants  praise  him  much  and 
brag  about  his  riding.  It  may  be  true,  but  I  have 
never  seen  him  mount.  His  eyes  are  often  half 
closed.  He  is  of  a  very  cruel  nature,  and  they  say 
he  has  killed  four  people.  One  day  he  thrashed  an 
interpreter  so  hard  that  they  had  to  carry  the  man 
to  the  river  to  bring  him  to.  He  troubles  himself 
about  nothing,  and  acts  as  if  he  did  not  understand 
anything  that  is  said  or  done.  He  sleeps  in  clothes, 
receives  his  visitors  like  a  tailor  with  his  legs  crossed, 
and  wears  thirty  thousand  ells  of  linen  on  his  head. 
His  trousers  are  so  wide  that  he  could  hide  inside 
them.  His  pronunciation  is  horrible,  especially  when 
he  is  angry." 

It  was  in  thankfulness  for  taking  such  good  care 
of  Djem  that  the  Sultan,  having  already  paid  one 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  ducats  for  three  years, 
sent  an  embassy  in  May,  1492,  to  bring  the  holy 
lance  which  had  killed  Christ  as  a  further  gift.  Rome 
had  celebrated  in  January  the  fall  of  Granada,  by 
which  the  Moslem  had  been  driven  out  of  Spain,  and 
they  hailed  this  relic  with  a  festival  as  splendid. 
Bishops  received  the  iron  lance-head  in  a  superb 
crystal  reliquary  from  the  Turkish  ambassadors,  two 
cardinals  received  it  from  the  bishops,  the  Pope  re- 
ceived it  from  the  cardinals,  and  in  long  procession 
the  whole  city  moved  to  St.  Peter's,  where  the  Pope 
blessed  the  people,  while  Cardinal  Borgia,  standing 
beside  him,  held  the  relic  in  the  air. 

It  was  less  than  two  months  after  when  death 


212  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

drew  near  to  Innocent.  A  Jewish  physician  offered 
to  cure  him  by  giving  him  a  drink  made  of  the  blood 
of  three  boys.  They  were  hired  for  a  florin  apiece, 
and  the  drink  was  mixed.  But  the  boys  and  the 
Pope  died  together. 

Three  candidates  made  an  open  bid  for  the  Papal 
crown  in  the  conclave.  Giuliano  della  Rovere,  the 
nephew  of  Sixtus,  was  backed  by  the  French  King 
with  two  hundred  thousand  and  by  Genoa  with  one 
hundred  thousand  florins.  Ascanio  Sforza,  the  great 
hunter,  brother  of  the  Duke  of  Milan,  backed  him- 
self. But  Roderigo  Borgia,  who  supported  Sforza 
to  defeat  della  Rovere,  came  out  a  winner.  It  was 
well  known  in  Rome  that  he  did  it  by  bidding 
highest.  Only  five  cardinals  out  of  twenty-three 
refused  the  bribe;  and  it  was  noted  that  three  of 
them  afterward  obtained  the  Papacy.  The  gossips 
even  knew  the  price  of  each  vote.  Borgia  sent  to 
Sforza's  house  four  horse-loads  of  gold,  gave  him  his 
own  palace  with  all  it  contained,  and  made  him  vice- 
chancellor.  He  was  the  most  costly.  The  others 
tapered  down  to  the  ninety-five-year-old  Patriarch 
of  Venice,  who  only  got  five  thousand  florins. 

Alexander  VI.,  the  new  Pope,  was  a  man  of  im- 
posing appearance,  great  practical  skill  in  affairs, 
persuasive  and  quick  in  argument.  His  crowning 
was  hailed  by  the  poets.  They  called  him  Divus 
Alexander.  And  one  wrote :  "  Rome  was  made 
great  by  Caesar,  but  now  Alexander  makes  it  far 
greater.  The  first  was  a  man,  the  second  is  a  god." 
Within  a  year  of  his  crowning  the  first  gold  came  to 
Rome  from  the  New  World,  and  the  Pope  drew  a 


Alexander  VI.  213 


line  from  pole  to  pole,  dividing  all  the  new  West  be- 
tween Spain  and  Portugal. 

Alexander  was  the  handsomest  Pope  since  Paul  II., 
and  had  always  exercised  apeculiar  power  over  women. 
The  first  notice  we  have  of  his  life  is  a  letter  from 
Pius  II.,  written  when  the  Cardinal  was  twenty-nine, 
to  rebuke  him  for  a  garden-party  he  attended  in  Siena, 
which  had  become  the  scandal  of  the  city  and  was  a 
"  disgrace  to  the  order  and  office  of  the  clergy."  In 
the  days  of  Paul,  Sixtus,  and  Innocent,  Borgia  had  for- 
gotten even  the  need  of  concealment.  His  mistress, 
Vannozza,  daughter  of  a  lesser  noble  of  Rome,  had 
borne  him  four  children,  Juan,  Caesar,  Jofre,  and 
Lucrezia,  who  were  openly  acknowledged.  But 
Vannozza  was  now  fifty  years  old,  and  scarcely  was 
Alexander  Pope  when  all  Rome  was  full  of  the  name 
of  Julia  Farnese,  a  young  married  noblewoman, 
eighteen  years  old,  whose  relation  to  the  Pope  was 
become  so  notorious  that  the  King  of  Naples  could 
write  of  it  to  his  ambassador  in  Spain.  In  1492  she 
bore  a  daughter,  and  in  September,  1493,  her  brother 
was  made  a  cardinal.  Before  the  end  of  the  year 
the  Pope  and  his  son  Caesar  were  splendidly  enter- 
tained by  the  Farnesi  at  their  castle  near  Rome. 

But  as  compared  with  Innocent  and  Sixtus,  Alex- 
ander promised  to  be  a  good  ruler.  He  did  not  seem 
one  to  be  feared.  This  is  how  an  eye-witness  de- 
scribes him  in  a  festal  procession :  "  He  sits  on  a 
snow-white  horse,  with  clear  brow  and  a  dignity  which 
constantly  compels  respect.  How  wonderful  is  the 
mild  tranquillity  of  his  mien,  how  faultless  the  nobil- 
ity of  his  countenance,  his  look  how  generous !  And 


214  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

how  his  stature  and  bearing  of  easy  beauty,  and  the 
air  of  boundless  health  around  him,  increase  the 
veneration  he  inspires !  "  Nor  did  the  new  Pope  dis- 
play the  inactivity  of  Innocent.  When  he  was 
crowned  he  found  that  two  hundred  and  twenty 
murders  had  been  committed  in  two  months.  He 
reformed  the  courts,  reestablished  peace,  and  com- 
pelled order.  His  foreign  politics  were  not  notably 
dangerous.  The  great  catastrophe  which  was  to 
come  upon  Italy  could  not  be  laid  at  his  door.  It 
was  the  Duke  of  Milan  who  called  the  French  King 
over  the  Alps. 

In  order  to  understand  the  invasion  which  opens 
the  last  act  of  the  drama  of  the  Renascence  Papacy, 
we  must  glance  for  a  moment  at  the  political  condi- 
tion of  Italy.  There  were  in  the  peninsula  five  great 
powers :  Florence,  Milan,  and  Venice  in  the  north, 
the  States  of  the  Church  in  the  centre,  and  Naples 
in  the  south.  Naples  was  a  kingdom,  Venice  an 
oligarchy.  Milan  and  Florence  had  both  lost  their 
liberties;  the  first  was  called  a  duchy  and  the  sec- 
ond was  nominally  a  republic,  but  really  under  the 
rule  of  Piero  de'  Medici,  the  great-grandson  of 
Cosimo.  A  number  of  the  smaller  cities  of  Italy  also 
constituted  independent  states  under  the  rule  of 
tyrants.  Outside  of  Naples  the  municipality  was, 
by  inheritance  from  the  ancient  days,  the  central 
point  of  Italian  government.  Each  one  of  these  city 
states,  large  and  small,  was  anxious  to  cheat  or  con- 
quer its  neighbors.  And  as  a  consequence  there 
reigned  a  petty  local  jealousy  and  a  besotted  local 
pride.  And  so  when  Lodovico  Sforza,  Duke  of  Milan, 


The  French  Invade  Italy.  2 1 5 

called  the  French  to  his  help  in  1494,  almost  all  Italy 
was  glad ;  for  each  state  hoped  to  gain  some  advan- 
tage over  its  neighbors  from  the  presence  of  the  for- 
eigner, and  the  common  people  hoped  that  some 
fortune  might  free  them  from  the  tyrants.  Lodovico 
called  them  because  he  was  afraid.  He  had  impris- 
oned his  nephew,  the  rightful  Duke,  and  was  killing 
him  by  slow  poison.  The  wife  of  his  victim  was  call- 
ing on  her  father,  the  King  of  Naples,  to  avenge  her 
wrongs,  and  Lodovico  needed  a  strong  ally.  His 
efforts  to  bring  in  the  invader  were  seconded  by 
Cardinal  Giuliano  della  Rovere,  nephew  of  Sixtus 
IV.,  now  living  in  France  for  fear  of  Alexander. 

It  was  not  hard  to  rouse  an  enthusiasm  for  the 
adventure  in  Charles  VIII.,  the  French  King,  an 
ambitious  boy  of  twenty-two,  ugly,  almost  deformed 
in  body,  of  violent  but  weak  will,  surrounded  by 
flatterers  as  incapable  as  himself.  Against  the  advice 
of  his  barons  he  decided  to  lead  an  army  into  Italy 
to  reassert  his  claim  to  the  throne  of  Naples,  which 
sixty  years  before  had  been  held  by  the  younger 
branch  of  his  family.  And  in  the  end  of  August  he 
crossed  the  Alps  with  about  forty  thousand  men. 
He  halted  at  the  first  town  and  plunged  into  such  a 
debauch  that  he  had  to  wait  a  month  before  he  was 
fit  to  go  on.  And  thus,  with  long  feasts  and  short 
marches,  he  made  his  way  along  the  whole  length  of 
the  Italian  peninsula  until  he  reached  Naples,  in  the 
end  of  February.  There  was  almost  no  fighting. 
After  the  French  had  stormed  two  small  towns  and 
put  the  whole  population  to  the  sword,  all  opposition 
ceased. 


216  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

But  in  the  midst  of  his  feasting  and  triumph  bad 
news  came  to  the  conqueror.  The  Pope,  Venice,  the 
Duke  of  Milan,  the  King  of  Spain,  and  the  Emperor 
had  leagued  against  him  and  his  retreat  was  cut  off. 
In  idle  recklessness  he  revelled  two  months  longer  in 
the  gardens  of  Naples,  and  started  his  long  retreat, 
with  only  twelve  thousand  men,  about  the  end  of 
May.  It  took  him  six  weeks  to  get  to  the  north, 
and  in  the  passes  of  the  Apennines  he  only  saved 
his  artillery  by  five  days  of  the  most  extraordinary 
labor,  in  which  the  generals  labored  like  the  common 
soldiers.  But  it  was  not  until  he  was  over  the  moun- 
tains and  safely  down  into  the  great  plain  of  the  Po 
that  the  army  of  the  League,  outnumbering  him 
three  to  one,  barred  his  way  at  the  town  of  Fornovo 
(July  6,  1495).  The  battle  was  won  in  less  than  an 
hour,  and  the  little  French  force  made  its  way  up 
the  Po  and  over  the  Alps  without  another  sword- 
stroke. 


PERIOD   II. 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

SAVONAROLA  AND  FREEDOM. 

N  the  whole  story  of  this  dallying  march 
to  the  end  of  Italy  and  back  with  a  hand- 
ful of  soldiers  there  are  only  two  Italians 
recorded  who  faced  the  boy  invader  like 
men.  These  were  the  friar  of  San  Mar- 
co, and  his  friend,  Piero  de'  Capponi,  one  of  the 
syndics  of  the  city  of  Florence.  It  was  on  the 
King's  downward  journey  that  Savonarola  came  into 
his  presence  as  ambassador  of  Florence.  "  O  most 
Christian  King,"  he  said,  "  thou  art  an  instrument  in 
the  hand  of  the  Lord  to  relieve  the  woes  of  Italy  and 
reform  the  prostrate  Church,  as  for  many  years  I 
have  foretold.  But  if  thou  be  not  just  and  merciful, 
if  thou  respect  not  the  liberties  of  the  city  of  Flor- 
ence, the  hand  of  the  Lord  shall  smite  thee  with  ter- 
rible scourges.  These  things  say  I  unto  thee  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord."  And  the  King  and  all  his  men 
of  war  did  honor  to  the  monk.  An  alliance  was 
made,  and  the  gates  of  the  city  opened  to  the  army 
of  France.  Charles  rode  through  the  narrow  streets 
with  levelled  lance,  the  symbol  of  a  conqueror ;  but 
he  soon  found  his  mistake ;  for  when  he  demanded 

217 


2 1 8  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

too  large  a  subsidy  in  exchange  for  his  alliance,  the 
City  Council  demurred.  Disputes  arose,  and  Charles 
bade  his  secretary  read  his  ultimatum  to  the  assembled 
syndics.  They  refused  to  accept  it,  and  the  King 
cried  out  in  anger,  "  Then  I  will  sound  my  trumpets." 
Capponi  sprang  forward,  snatched  the  paper  from  the 
hands  of  the  secretary,  and  tore  it  in  fragments,  cry- 
ing out,  "  And  we  will  ring  our  bells! "  And  Charles 
made  a  fair  treaty  with  the  only  state  in  Italy  he  was 
forced  to  respect. 

In  order  to  understand  how  this  monk  and  his 
friends  had  become  leaders  of  the  only  free  city  in 
Italy,  we  must  go  back  some  thirteen  years  to  the 
time  (1481)  when  Brother  Savonarola  came  from  a 
Dominican  monastery  of  Bologna  to  San  Marco  in 
Florence.  He  was  twenty-nine  years  old,  the  grand- 
son of  a  distinguished  court  physician  and  university 
professor  of  Ferrara,  whose  son  had  degenerated 
into  a  mere  courtier.  He  had  been  a  teacher  of 
novices  and  was  assigned  the  same  duty  at  San 
Marco.  His  homilies  soon  stirred  the  spirits  of  the 
young  men  under  his  care,  and  he  was  invited  to 
preach  a  course  of  Lenten  sermons  in  the  Church  of 
San  Lorenzo.  Like  all  his  previous  attempts  to 
preach  in  public,  these  sermons  were  notable  failures. 
At  the  last  ones  he  only  had  an  audience  of  twenty- 
five,  including  women  and  children.  And  similar  ill 
success  followed  another  effort  two  years  later.  The 
reigning  preacher  of  the  day  was  a  certain  Fra  Mari- 
ano, whom  all  Florence  flocked  to  hear.  The  liter- 
ati praised  him  for  his  musical  voice,  chosen  words, 
and  harmonious  cadences,  his  lines  from  Plato,  Aris- 


The  Mission  Preachers.  219 

totle,  and  the  poets.  Savonarola  was  abrupt  and 
unstudied  in  voice  and  manner,  and  preached  from 
the  Bible,  which  the  learned  Florentines  of  the  age 
would  not  read  because  the  Latin  of  Jerome  was  bad. 
It  was  just  after  this  disappointment  that  he  thought 
he  beheld  the  heavens  opened  and  all  the  future 
calamities  of  the  Church  passing  before  his  eyes, 
while  a  divine  voice  charged  him  to  announce  them 
to  the  people.  From  that  moment  he  felt  elected  to 
a  mission  to  cry  to  all  nations,  "  Repent  and  return 
to  the  Lord." 

The  next  year  he  was  sent  as  Lenten  preacher  to 
San  Gemignano,  a  little  town  among  the  Sienese 
hills. 

The  sending  of  mission  preachers  has  been  as  com- 
mon in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  as  the  modern 
Protestant  use  of  evangelists,  and  at  no  time  have 
they  met  with  more  astonishing  success  than 
during  the  last  half  of  the  fifteenth  century  in 
Italy.  We  have  the  names  of  more  than  twenty  men 
who  mightily  stirred  the  cities  in  which  they 
preached.  Robert  of  Lecce,  for  instance,  in  1448 
had  fifteen  thousand  hearers  in  the  city  of  Perugia, 
who  listened  to  him  four  hours  amid  sighs,  tears,  and 
outcries  of  repentance.  The  whole  city  made  a  re- 
nunciation of  worldly  pleasures,  symbolized  by  a 
"  burning  of  vanities."  Debtors  were  released, 
blood  foes  were  forgiven,  and  the  entire  population 
apparently  converted  from  evil  to  good. 

Some  such  effect  as  this  Savonarola  produced  in 
San  Gemignano  when  he  first  preached  on  the 
theme  of  his  life — the  triple  assertion  which  formed 


22O  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

the  background  of  all  his  subsequent  utterances:  (i) 
The  Church  will  be  scourged;  (2)  she  will  be  re- 
generated; (3)  and  that  speedily.  He  did  not  yet 
announce  this  as  a  direct  revelation  of  God  to  him, 
but  supported  it  by  reason  and  the  Scriptures.  The 
audiences  were  moved  almost  to  ecstasy. 

In  1486  he  was  sent  to  Brescia.  He  preached  on  the 
Book  of  Revelation,  and  declared  that  the  wrath  of  the 
Lord  was  coming.  The  streets  should  be  filled  with 
blood  and  fire.  Let  them  repent,  for  the  just  shall 
find  mercy.  A  generation  later,  at  the  horrible  sack 
of  Brescia  by  the  French,  the  people  recalled  his 
words.  For  three  years  he  preached  throughout 
Lombardy,  and  his  fame  filled  all  Italy. 

In  1489  he  was  summoned  back  to  Florence,  and 
began  to  expound  the  Apocalypse  in  the  convent 
garden,  standing  by  a  rose-bush  whose  scions  were 
tended  by  his  brethren  for  four  hundred  years.  His 
audiences  grew  until  he  had  to  preach  in  the  church. 
His  three  theses  of  judgment,  regeneration,  and  that 
speedily,  roused  an  extraordinary  excitement,  and  the 
city  began  to  be  divided  into  the  friends  and  foes  of 
Savonarola.  He  published  treatises  on  philosophical 
subjects  to  defend  himself  against  the  charge  of  igno- 
rance, and  to  commend  the  teachings  of  the  Church  he 
wrote  tractates  on  "  Humility,"  "  Prayer,"  "  The 
Love  of  Jesus,"  "The  Widowed  Life."  By  these 
writings,  as  well  as  by  his  sermons,  it  is  plain  that 
his  best  equipment  for  his  work  was  his  knowledge 
of  the  Bible.  He  knew  the  Bible  thoroughly  (and  it 
must  be  remembered  he  had  neither  a  vernacular 
version  ncr  a  concordance),  and  by  his  method  of 


Savonarola s  Sermons.  221 

exegesis  he  could  find  in  it  proofs  for  everything,  big 
and  little.  Here  are  specimens  written  on  the  mar- 
gin of  two  of  his  Bibles  that  have  survived.  They  are 
from  the  opening  verses  of  Genesis.  The  interpre- 
tations are  arranged  under  six  heads.  The  division 
of  the  waters  means  spiritually,  the  movement  of  the 
passions  and  of  errors  possessing  the  intellect ;  alle- 
gorically  in  the  Old  Testament,  the  Gentiles  separated 
from  the  chosen  people;  allegorically  in  the  New 
Testament,  tribulations  separating  many  from  the 
Church ;  morally,  the  struggle  of  the  passions  against 
duty;  anagogically,  joy  of  the  blessed  when  freed 
from  tribulation. 

The  fifth  day  (birds,  fishes)  means  spiritually,  the 
contemplation  of  higher  and  of  lower  things;  alle- 
gorically in  the  Old  Testament,  the  Maccabees  (who 
always  wavered) ;  allegorically  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, the  contemplative  and  active  life ;  morally,  the 
contemplation  of  things  divine  and  of  things  human ; 
anagogically,  angels  and  men  admitted  into  the  an- 
gelic choir. 

Of  course  it  was  not  such  exegesis  which  crowded 
the  great  church  when  he  preached  and  stirred 
his  hearers  to  enthusiasm.  This  sort  of  thing  ap- 
pears in  all  his  sermons,  but  it  is  shot  through  and 
through  with  sudden  flashes  of  invective  against 
gambling,  against  usury,  against  the  temptation  of 
the  clergy,  appeals  to  abandon  worldly  things,  and 
praises  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  was  when  he  launched  out 
into  these  discharges  that  his  eyes  flashed  and  his 
wonderful  voice  rolled.  Especially  did  he  sway  the 
hearts  of  his  hearers  when  he  spoke  of  his  visions. 


222  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

For  the  power  in  the  man  seems  to  have  been  his 
conviction  that  he  was  directly  inspired  of  God.  He 
felt  that  he  must  preach  these  things,  for  he  writes 
how,  having  determined  not  to  mention  his  visions 
in  a  certain  sermon,  he  agonized  all  night,  and  at 
dawn  heard  a  voice  say,  "  Fool,  dost  thou  not  see  it 
is  God's  will?  "  "  Whereupon  I  preached  a  terrible 
sermon."  He  spared  neither  high  nor  low,  and  being 
invited  to  preach  before  the  Signory,  rebuked  tyrants 
and  bad  rulers  in  terms  that  many  present  applied  at 
once  to  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  grandson  of  Cosi- 
mo,  the  uncrowned  King  of  Florence.  With  Lorenzo, 
Savonarola  refused  all  intercourse,  would  not  pay 
the  customary  visit  to  the  patron  of  the  monastery 
even  when  he  was  elected  prior,  and  distributed 
among  the  poor  the  great  sum  of  money  Lorenzo 
sent  to  the  convent,  saying  in  the  pulpit,  "  No  good 
dog  stops  barking  because  a  bone  is  flung  to  him." 

Soon  after  death  came  to  Lorenzo,  and  he  sent  for 
Savonarola  to  hear  his  last  confession.  "  I  know 
no  honest  friar  but  this  one,"  he  said.  With  great 
agitation  he  spoke  of  the  sins  that  tormented  him 
— the  sack  of  the  city  of  Volterra,  the  robbery  of  the 
funds  of  the  institute  for  giving  dowries  to  poor 
girls,  through  which  many  had  been  driven  on  to 
the  streets,  and  the  bloody  vengeance  for  the  Pazzi 
conspiracy.  Savonarola  said  many  times,  "  God  is 
good,  God  is  merciful " ;  and  when  Lorenzo  was 
through  and  calmer,  continued,  "  But  three  things 
are  needful."  "What  things,  father?"  "First,  a 
great  and  living  faith  in  God's  mercy."  "  I  have  it." 


Savonarola  s  Visions. .  223 

"  Second,  you  must  give  back  your  ill-gotten  wealth." 
Lorenzo  nodded  assent.  "  Lastly,  you  must  restore 
liberty  to  the  people  of  Florence."  The  dying  man 
turned  his  face  to  the  wall;  and  looking  sternly  at 
him  for  a  little,  the  friar  left  him  unabsolved. 

It  was  in  this  mood  that  Savonarola  saw  two  visions 
which,  in  medals  and  engravings,  were  spread  through 
Italy.  The  first  was  a  sword  suspended  over  a  great 
city,  and  on  the  sword,  "  Gladius  Domini  super  ter- 
ram  cito  et  velociter."  The  second  was  a  black  cross 
rising  from  the  city  of  Rome  and  stretching  its  arms 
over  all  the  earth ;  on  it  was  written,  "  Crux  Iras 
Dei  " ;  while  from  Jerusalem  rose  a  shining  golden 
cross,  on  which  was  "  Crux  Misericordiae  Dei." 

Scarcely  was  Piero  de'  Medici  firmly  established 
in  the  seat  of  his  father,  Lorenzo,  than  he  procured 
from  the  Superior  an  order  for  Savonarola  to  preach 
in  other  cities.  It  was  to  checkmate  such  designs 
that  Savonarola  and  his  friends  obtained  a  Papal  brief 
erecting  the  convent  of  San  Marco  into  an  indepen- 
dent congregation,  subject  only  to  its  own  prior  and, 
of  course,  to  the  Pope.  Savonarola's  first  step  was  to 
reform  his  own  house.  He  reduced  living  expenses 
and  founded  schools  for  painting,  sculpture,  architec- 
ture, and  manuscript-making.  He  provided  that  the 
brethren  apt  to  teach  should  go  out  regularly  on  mis- 
sions. Each  was  to  be  attended  by  a  lay  brother,  who 
worked  for  his  support,  that  he  might  be  not  kept 
from  speaking  the  truth  for  fear  of  checking  alms. 
He  revived  in  the  monastery  the  study  of  theol- 
ogy, philosophy,  Greek,  Hebrew,  and  the  Eastern 


224  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

tongues.  Under  his  rule  the  number  of  friars  in- 
creased so  greatly  that  the  building  was  not  large 
enough  to  hold  them. 

And  now  the  true  genius  of  Savonarola's  oratory 
began  to  appear.  More  and  more  plainly  he  spoke, 
as  one  to  whom  God  had  given  a  secret  word.  He 
was  instant  in  threatening,  prophesying,  declaring 
visions  of  judgment.  "  The  princes  of  Italy,"  he 
said,  "  are  like  men  taking  the  back  of  a  whale  for 
an  island  and  building  on  it  a  great  and  wicked  city 
of  oppression  and  blood.  The  whale  plunges  and 
Babylon  is  destroyed."  "  Woe,"  he  cried,  "  unto  the 
Church !  Once  she  had  chalices  of  wood  and  prel- 
ates of  gold.  Now  she  has  chalices  of  gold  and 
prelates  of  wood."  It  was  a  series  of  sermons  on 
Noah's  ark,  where  he  explained  each  of  the  ten 
planks  with  minute  allegorical  interpretation,  that  he 
accompanied  with  prophecies  of  a  new  Cyrus  who 
should  come  in  triumph  to  scourge  and  free  Italy. 
In  September  he  began  to  preach  on  the  deluge, 
and  on  the  2 1st  he  found  the  Duomo  filled  with  a 
crowd  that  had  waited  from  early  morning.  Like 
the  note  of  some  strange  trumpet  his  voice  rang  out 
the  words  of  his  text,  "  Lo  I  will  bring  waters  upon 
the  earth,"  and  all  stood  trembling  while  for  many 
minutes  he  smote  them  with  his  stern  eloquence. 
For  the  night  before  news  had  reached  Florence  that 
the  army  of  France  was  pouring  down  the  slopes  of 
the  Alps.  We  have  seen  how  supinely  the  princes 
of  Italy  had  watched  this  gathering  storm.  No 
one  prepared  and  it  came  to  tfce  people  like  an 
earthquake.  Savonarola  had  warned  them  and 


The  Man  for  the  Hour.  225 

called  them  to  be  ready,  and  to  Savonarola,  as  to  a 
prophet  of  God,  the  hearts  of  all  turned  in  the  hour 
of  fear. 

Piero  de'  Medici  was  no  man  for  the  situation. 
After  a  feeble  attempt  to  fight,  he  went  to  Charles, 
then  hemmed  into  a  position  of  the  greatest  military 
peril,  and  in  a  cowardly  interview  surrendered  the 
fortresses  of  his  quadrilateral  without  a  blow.  When 
the  news  reached  Florence  the  streets  filled,  and  ail 
day  a  great  mass  of  armed  men  drifted  aimlessly 
through  the  city.  After  sixty  years  of  tyranny,  the 
folk  were  up,  and  no  man  knew  where  their  wrath 
would  carry  them.  Then  Savonarola  entered  the 
pulpit,  not  now  in  the  garb  of  the  prophet  of  woe, 
but  with  the  gentle  words  of  the  Gospel,  and  he 
stayed  the  storm  till  the  Signory  had  resolved  that 
the  Republic  must  "  shake  off  this  baby  government 
and  care  for  itself."  It  was  decided  to  arm  the 
citizens,  to  secretly  fill  every  cloister  with  soldiers, 
and  then  to  send  an  embassy  to  offer  peace  to  the 
French.  Savonarola,  the  one  man  whom  Charles 
respected  and  who  had  "  the  entire  love  of  the  peo- 
ple," headed  the  embassy.  And  when  the  King  was 
gone  at  his  commanding  request,1  Savonarola,  "  lover 
of  liberty  and  hater  of  disorder,"  was  a  tower  of 
strength  to  distracted  Florence.  "Woe  to  thee, 
Florence,  if  thou  desirest  a  head  to  dominate  and 
oppress  all  the  rest.  The  sole  form  of  government 
suited  to  our  needs  is  a  civil  and  general  government." 

1  "  Hearken  now  to  the  voice  of  God's  servant.  Pursue  thy 
journey  without  delay.  Seek  not  to  bring  ruin  on  this  city  and  thereby 
rouse  the  anger  of  the  Lord  against  thee." 


226  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

And  he  suggested  as  the  best  plan  a  grand  Council 
after  the  model  of  Venice. 

"  A  grand  Council."  It  was  the  word  that  solved 
the  problem.  The  people  caught  it  as  it  fell  from 
the  pulpit,  and  the  foundation  of  the  government  was 
laid.  By  the  time  Charles  left  Italy  (July,  1495)  the 
building  of  the  new  city  was  complete,  and  in  all  the 
plan  the  master  word  came  from  the  sermons  of  the 
Prior  of  San  Marco.  It  was  not  an  entirely  wise 
government,  nor  what  we  should  call  a  free  govern- 
ment, but  it  is  considered  by  many  of  her  historians 
the  best  Florence  ever  had.  Its  unwisdom  and  lack 
of  freedom  are  plain  in  the  war  with  the  people  of 
Pisa,  long  ruined  and  insulted  by  the  yoke  of  Flor- 
ence. This  foolish  and  cruel  war  to  crush  a  sister 
city  was  never  rebuked  by  Savonarola,  and  it  caused 
the  fall  of  the  new  Republic.  But  it  is  possible  to 
recognize  that  there  was  a  very  narrow  and  intoler- 
ant strain  in  the  puritan  patriot  without  forgetting 
that  when  the  sword  of  her  tyrants  sank  in  terror  the 
voice  of  Savonarola  awed  the  invader  of  Italy,  and  in 
the  cathedral  of  her  only  free  city  rang  through 
perilous  days  the  praise  of  liberty. 


PERIOD  III. 

FROM  THE  FRENCH  INVASION  TO  THE  SACK 
OF  ROME  (1494-1527). 


PERIOD    III. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  HOUSEHOLD  OF  ALEXANDER  VI. — THE  PRO- 
PHET OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS  AND  THE  VICAR  OF 
CHRIST. 

|HE  year  1496  found  Pope  Alexander  VI. 
living  peacefully  in  the  Vatican  with  his 
blooming  family  gathered  around  him. 
Juan,  who  was  Duke  of  Gandia  in  Spain, 
where  he  had  left  his  newly  married  wife, 
lived  in  the  Vatican.  Lucrezia,  Alexander's  daugh- 
ter, was  married  to  a  natural  son  of  the  younger  line 
of  the  great  Milanese  house  of  Sforza.  They  lived 
in  a  palace  of  their  own.  The  sixteen-year-old  son, 
Jofre,  married  to  a  daughter  of  the  King  of  Naples, 
resided  in  the  palace  of  a  cardinal.  Caesar,  who  had 
gone  into  the  Church,  was  only  a  bishop,  and  lived 
alone  not  far  off. 

It  was  a  gay  life  with  which  these  brides  of  six- 
teen filled  the  Vatican  quarter.  They  went  to  high 
mass  at  St.  Peter's,  and  crowded  the  cardinals  so  as 
to  be  close  to  their  father  when  he  said  prayers  for 
the  world.  The  Pope  himself  was  not  much  given 
to  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  and  the  cardinals  used 
to  invent  excuses  to  escape  his  dinners  of  a  single 

229 


230  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

course.  But  he  went  often  to  the  splendid  festi- 
vals of  his  daughters,  and  frequently  received  them  in 
the  Vatican,  with  the  glittering  cavalcade  of  young 
cardinals  and  courtiers  who  danced  attendance  upon 
them.  Rome  had  become  used  to  seeing  the 
head  of  a  celibate  clergy  living  thus,  but  the  public 
talk  of  the  city  said  that  the  life  of  the  Pope  and  his 
children  was  much  worse  than  it  looked,  and  the 
ambassadors  of  foreign  princes  reported  terrible 
things  of  it  in  their  letters  home.  The  Cardinal  of 
Gurk,  who  had  withdrawn  to  Perugia,  told  the  am- 
bassador of  Florence :  "  When  I  think  of  the  life  of 
the  Pope  and  of  some  of  the  cardinals,  the  idea 
of  living  at  Rome  fills  me  with  horror.  If  God 
does  not  reform  his  Church  I  will  none  of  such  a 
life." 

The  satirists  found  plenty  of  material.  Hear  Pon- 
tano,  a  contemporary  Neapolitan  poet : 

"  Can  you  tell  me  the  name  of  that  remarkable 
old  man,  more  decorated  than  a  relique-box,  smell- 
ing of  musk  like  a  civet-cat,  and  stepping  gingerly 
as  a  young  dancer,  who  hums  a  song  and  keeps 
turning  his  head  and  winking  as  he  walks  ?  It  is  a 
cardinal  just  landed  from  Valencia,  who  has  only  one 
thought  in  his  head — to  please  the  ladies.  Hear  him 
sing  his  love  adventures.  And  how  he  ogles  the 
windows!  How  he  smiles  and  bows  gracefully! 
Beautiful  little  grayhead,  you  will  die  younger  than 
on  the  day  you  were  born." 

In  sterner  strain  wrote  Baptista  Mantuanus : 

"  You  who  would  live  well  depart  from  Rome, 
For  all  things  are  permitted  there  except  to  be  good. " 


The  Reform  of  the  Carnival.          231 

Already  Alexander  had  become  involved  in  con- 
troversy with  Savonarola.  Just  as  the  French  left 
Italy  a  Papal  letter  invited  the  friar  to  Rome.  It 
was  called  forth  by  his  strictures  on  the  clergy,  the 
advice  of  Cardinal  Sforza,  brother  of  the  Duke  of 
Milan,  whose  plans  were  blocked  by  the  Republic  of 
Florence,  and  the  furious  attacks  of  the  Arrabbiati 
party  of  city  politics.  The  letter  was  couched  in 
tones  of  affection,  but  Savonarola  feared  a  snare. 
He  answered  that  his  health  was  broken,  his  life 
guarded  against  assassination  even  at  home  by  armed 
men,  his  presence  necessary  to  the  city.  He  begged 
to  be  excused,  and  the  Pope  sent  a  message  that  he 
need  not  come  at  present.  But  scarcely  a  month 
was  past  when  a  second  letter  arrived,  forbidding 
Savonarola  to  preach,  revoking  the  order  which  had 
made  San  Marco  an  independent  congregation,  and 
referring  it  to  the  Congregation  of  Lombardy.  For 
the  desire  of  the  Pope  to  aid  his  new  politics  by  rein- 
stating the  Medici  at  Florence  was  now  added  to  his 
other  motives  for  silencing  this  "  pestilent  fellow." 
Savonarola  protested,  but  obeyed  the  inhibition  from 
preaching. 

He  spent  the  next  few  months  in  writing  letters  and 
planning  the  reform  of  the  carnival.  There  were 
two  evil  carnival  habits  common  in  the  city.  The 
boys  of  Florence  had  a  way  of  forming  gangs,  which 
blocked  the  streets  with  long  poles  and  levied  toll  on 
all  who  passed,  spending  the  money  in  debauchery. 
The  game  of  "  stones "  followed  the  bonfires  at 
night.  It  was  so  brutal  that  several  players  were 
killed  each  year.  People  are  very  tenacious  of  such 


232  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

customs;  only  a  few  years  ago  the  law  suppressing 
the  brutal  eel-pulling  raised  the  barricades  in  the 
Dutch  cities.  And  the  Signory  had  in  vain  tried  to 
stop  this  beastly  sport  of  "  stones."  The  friar  under- 
took to  try.  He  formed  the  youth  of  Florence  into 
bands,  ordered  and  drilled,  and  bade  them  collect  alms 
for  the  poor.  He  wrote  new  songs  for  them  to  sing, 
and  asked  his  friend,  the  poet  Bienveni,  to  write  more. 
He  devised  a  great  procession  of  the  whole  city,  and 
while  working  good  the  boys  forgot  to  do  evil. 

Meantime  the  Pope  had  changed  his  policy.  At 
the  request  of  the  Florentine  government  he  removed 
the  inhibition  from  Savonarola.  He  had  given  the 
friar's  sermons  to  a  bishop  who  was  a  Dominican  and 
therefore  free  from  the  intense  jealousy  of  the  monk 
against  a  member  of  a  rival  order.  He  reported  that 
the  friar  respected  the  dogmas  and  authority  of  the 
Church,  speaking  only  against  simony  and  corruption, 
and  counselled  the  Pope  to  make  friends,  even,  if 
necessary,  by  offering  the  cardinal's  purple.  And  so 
a  Dominican  was  secretly  sent  to  Florence  to  offer 
the  red  hat  to  Savonarola,  on  condition  that  he  should 
change  the  tone  of  his  sermons. 

This  was  in  the  winter  of  1496,  and  in  Lent  of  that 
year  Savonarola,  protesting  that  he  believed  all  that 
is  believed  by  the  Roman  Church  and  submitted  to 
her  authority,  was  again  swinging  the  lash  of  his 
terrible  invective  on  the  sins  of  Italy.  An  extraor- 
dinary effect  followed  his  words.  Everywhere  he 
was  hailed  as  a  prophet  of  God  or  an  emissary  of  the 
devil.  And  in  Florence,  while  the  Signory  treated 
him  as  the  first  citizen  of  the  Republic,  the  Arrabbiati 


The  Burning  of  the  "  Vanities."       233 

laid  daily  plots  to  assassinate  him  as  the  most  dan- 
gerous opponent  of  their  treason. 

There  was  no  enemy  more  bitter  against  the  Re- 
public and  its  first  citizen  than  the  Pope.  But  he 
was  too  busy  during  the  summer  to  attend  to  the 
friar  or  the  plots  of  the  Medici  to  reconquer  Florence. 
For  another  plan  was  on  foot.  Italy  was  divided 
into  two  parties :  on  the  one  side  a  league  of  Ven- 
ice, Milan,  Rome,  Spain,  the  Emperor,  and  England ; 
on  the  other  Florence,  Savoy,  with  other  small  states, 
and  France.  And  out  of  the  desperate  political 
disorder  the  Pope  proposed  to  draw  lasting  gain  to 
his  house.  The  first  thing  was  to  resume  the  sys- 
tem of  Sixtus  IV.,  to  crush  the  small  rulers  in  the 
patrimonium,  who  had  grown  again  from  vassals  to 
tyrants.  He  began  with  the  Orsini,  the  richest  and 
most  powerful ;  declared  them  rebels, — which  was  true 
enough,  for  they  were  in  the  pay  of  France, — confis- 
cated their  lands  and  gave  them  to  his  son,  the  Duke 
of  Gandia,  who  in  October,  1496,  became  Standard- 
bearer  of  the  Church.  But  it  was  an  empty  triumph. 
On  the  23d  of  January  the  Orsini  defeated  the  Papal 
troops  in  hopeless  panic,  and  Gandia,  wounded,  fled 
to  the  walls  of  Rome,  where  he  remained  the  rest  of 
the  winter. 

Meantime  at  Florence,  during  Lent,  the  boys  were 
going  from  house  to  house  to  collect  "  vanities,"  and 
when  the  last  day  had  arrived  a  vast  pile  was  arranged 
in  the  piazza  on  a  scaffold  pyramid  sixty  feet  high 
and  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  around  the  base.  Then, 
amid  hymns  and  the  ringing  of  bells,  the  pile  was 
fired  and  went  up  in  smoke.  Perhaps  no  act  of 


234  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Savonarola  has  been  so  much  discussed  as  this  com- 
paratively unimportant  burning  of  the  "  vanities." 
There  was  nothing  new  in  it.  The  Florentine  pile 
was  only  one  of  many  others  before  and  after.  Per- 
haps, also,  it  was  more  valuable.  When  Lippi  made 
a  practice  of  using  the  notorious  features  of  his  mis- 
tress in  pictures  of  the  Madonna  for  chapels,  and 
Bartolommeo  painted  for  a  church  a  picture  which 
had  to  be  removed,  by  the  advice  of  those  who  heard 
the  confessions  of  the  worshippers  in  it,  there  must 
have  been  a  number  of  burnable  pictures  in  Florence 
of  considerable  artistic  value.  But  it  is  not  probable 
that  the  pile  contained  many  works  of  art  that  decent 
people  would  not  willingly  let  die.  Jerome  Savo- 
narola was  a  puritan,  but  he  was  no  more  a  philistine 
than  John  Milton.  The  man  who  had  for  disciples 
and  friends  Bartolommeo,  the  Delia  Robbia,  Lorenzo 
di  Credi,  Botticelli,  and  Michael  Angelo  would  not 
wantonly  have  destroyed  innocent  beauty.  Nor 
would  that  friar  have  burned  any  treasures  of  learn- 
ing who,  in  the  year  of  the  "  vanities,"  stripped  his 
convent  of  its  last  remaining  lands  and  had  it  assume 
a  heavy  debt,  in  order  to  save  the  library  of  the 
Medici  from  being  dispersed  at  public  sale. 

It  was  in  the  early  spring  of  1497  that  Cardinal 
Caesar,  the  Duke  of  Gandia,  and  Giovanni  Sforza,  of 
Pesaro,  two  sons  and  a  son-in-law  of  the  Pope,  stood 
before  the  altar  of  St.  Peter  to  receive  the  palms 
from  the  hand  of  their  father.  But  there  was  no 
peace  in  their  hearts  one  with  another.  Already 
Sforza  was  a  worn-out  tool  of  Borgian  ambition,  and 
they  were  secretly  trying  to  force  him  to  consent  to 


The  Borgia  Mystery.  235 

divorce,  that  the  hand  of  Lucrezia  might  again  be 
used  in  their  game.  During  Holy  Week,  on  pretence 
of  going  to  service  in  a  distant  church,  he  flung  him- 
self on  a  swift  horse  and  rode  through  the  gates  to 
refuge  in  his  own  city  of  Pesaro. 

And  now  the  Pope  turned  his  attention  to  Florence. 
Piero  de'  Medici  had  been  living  in  Rome,  as  most 
pretenders  have  lived,  in  gambling  and  debauchery, 
loaded  with  debts,  pledging  everything  he  could  find 
a  pawnbroker  to  take,  and  already  looked  at  askance 
by  the  money-lenders.  When  he  marched  to  Flor- 
ence in  April  the  Pope  gave  him  good  wishes.  He 
arrived  before  the  city  at  daybreak,  with  the  hope 
that  his  partisans  would  rise  and  open  the  gates.  But 
no  one  stirred,  except  to  sight  the  culverins,  and  he 
withdrew  as  swiftly  as  he  had  come. 

Within  a  month  a  Papal  bull  excommunicated  Savo- 
narola because  he  had  refused  to  obey  a  command 
to  unite  his  convent  with  the  Roman  Congregation. 
But  scarcely  was  it  sent  when  something  happened 
at  Rome  which  shook  the  nerves  even  of  Alexander. 
Foiled  in  his  attempt  to  make  his  son,  the  Duke  of 
Gandia,  great  at  the  expense  of  the  Orsini,  Alexan- 
der had  created  him  hereditary  ruler  of  Beneventum, 
Terracina,  and  Pontecorvo,  nominally  as  a  vassal  of 
the  Church,  really  as  an  independent  prince.  A 
week  later,  on  the  I4th  of  June,  the  new  Prince  and 
his  younger  brother,  Caesar,  took  supper  with  their 
mother  in  a  vineyard,  and  at  the  close  of  the  feast 
rode  off  together.  Gandia  soon  left  the  party,  at- 
tended by  one  servant.  In  the  morning  he  had  not 
returned,  and  his  servant  was  picked  up  senseless 


236  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

and  dying  in  the  street.  They  found  a  coal-seller  on 
the  banks  of  the  river  who  said  that  the  night  before 
he  watched  two  men  who  came  cautiously  down  to 
the  Tiber  and  looked  around.  They  went  back 
among  the  houses.  Again  they  came  out  and 
looked.  They  gave  a  signal.  Then  came  a  rider  on 
a  white  horse.  Behind  him  was  a  body  with  head 
and  arms  hanging  on  one  side,  the  feet  on  the  other. 
He  rode  to  the  edge,  and  the  servants  threw  it  in. 
The  cloak  floated,  and  the  masked  man  stooped  for 
a  large  stone,  threw  it,  and  sank  the  cloak.  Then  all 
went  away.  The  police  asked  why  he  had  not  re- 
ported the  facts  to  them.  He  answered,  "  I  did  not 
think  it  worth  while ;  I  have  seen  in  my  time  a  good 
hundred  bodies  thrown  into  the  river  there."  All 
night  and  morning  they  dragged  the  river,  and  at 
midday  drew  out  the  eldest  son  of  the  Pope,  pierced 
with  nine  wounds. 

Alexander  almost  went  mad  with  grief.  He  shut 
himself  into  his  room  and  would  not  be  comforted. 
From  Wednesday  evening  until  Saturday  morning 
he  neither  ate,  drank,  nor  slept.  On  the  iQth 
he  called  a  consistory,  and  in  an  address  filled 
with  penitence  and  zeal  announced  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  commission  of  six  cardinals  to  draft 
a  plan  for  the  reform  of  the  Church.  They  drew  up 
a  great  bull  for  reform,  of  which  two  copies  still  sur- 
vive in  the  Vatican  archives.  Its  introduction  an- 
nounced that  the  wholesome  ancient  rules  by  which 
councils  and  Popes  had  checked  sensuality  and  ava- 
rice were  broken  through.  "  An  unbearable  disso- 
luteness has  come  into  the  Church.  We  propose, 
therefore,  to  begin  reform  with  the  Roman  court, 


The  Popes  Contrition.  237 

which  ought  to  be  an  example  of  virtuous  living  to 
all  the  Church."  Excellent  provisions  followed  for 
regulating  the  scandalous  worldliness  and  luxury 
among  the  cardinals.  No  cardinal  was  to  draw 
more  than  six  thousand  florins  yearly  from  benefices, 
or  have  more  than  eighty  servants  and  thirty  horses 
in  his  court;  nor  were  his  heirs  permitted  to  spend 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  florins  on  his  funeral. 
Cardinals  were  to  be  forbidden  to  gamble  at  cards, 
to  give  great  public  hunts,  to  attend  the  performances 
of  profane  comedies,  to  employ  clowns,  jugglers,  or 
bands  of  musicians.  Simony,  with  all  its  attendant 
evils,  was  most  sternly  forbidden. 

It  was  while  the  Pope  was  in  this  mood  that  the 
excommunicated  Savonarola  wrote  him  a  letter  of 
condolence.  "  The  Lord  in  his  mercy,"  he  concluded, 
"passeth  over  all  our  sins.  I  announce  things  of 
which  I  am  assured.  But  let  your  Beatitude  turn  a 
favoring  eye  on  the  work  of  faith,  for  which  I  labor 
without  ceasing,  and  give  ear  no  longer  to  the  impious. 
Thus  the  Lord  will  bestow  on  you  joy  instead  of 
grief,  inasmuch  as  all  my  predictions  are  true,  and 
none  that  resisteth  the  Lord  can  ever  know  peace. 
Charity  moveth  me  to  write  these  things,  Most 
Blessed  Father,  and  the  hope  that  your  Beatitude 
may  receive  true  consolation  from  God ;  for  the 
thunders  of  his  wrath  will  ere  long  be  heard,  and 
blessed  will  be  those  that  have  put  their  trust  in  him. 
May  the  Lord  of  all  mercy  console  your  Holiness  in 
your  tribulation." 

The  epigramist  wrote  differently  of  this  "  fisher 
of  men  who  drew  out  in  his  nets  his  own  son." 

The  search  of  the  police  could  not  clear  up  the 


238  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

mystery  of  the  murder.  Many  writers  suspect  that 
their  failure  was  due  to  suggestions  from  the  highest 
authority  not  to  look  too  far.  Whether  this  be  true 
or  not,  the  historian  is  not  called  upon  to  make  good 
their  lack  of  energy.  The  dark  question,  Who  mur- 
dered the  Duke  of  Gandia?  is  useful  to  him  only  to 
bring  into  his  pages  some  touch  of  the  perennial  in- 
terest of  a  strong  detective  story.  But  it  is  of  the 
greatest  historical  significance  that  within  a  few 
months  Rome  and  Italy  came  to  believe  that  an 
illegitimate  son  of  the  Vicar  of  Christ  had  killed  his 
brother  out  of  jealousy,  and  that  the  father  was  un- 
willing to  punish  the  murder.  This  much  only  is 
certain,  that  Caesar  Borgia  soon  displayed  in  his  open 
deeds  a  jealous  ambition,  daring  and  cowardly,  which 
was  quite  capable  of  fratricide,  and  that  through  all 
his  career  he  remained  the  darling  of  his  father's 
heart. 

The  Pope's  contrition  lasted  but  for  a  little.  That 
fatal  paternal  passion  which  Balzac  has  pictured  in 
Pere  Goriot  seems  to  have  replaced  in  his  old  age 
the  lust  that  had  ruled  him  down  to  its  very  thresh- 
old, and  before  the  summer  was  over  he  was  dis- 
cussing plans  by  which  Caesar,  laying  down  the 
purple,  was  to  become  a  prince  like  his  dead  brother. 
It  was  said  that  the  first  step  suggested  was  that  his 
brother  Jofre's  wife,  his  adultery  with  whom  was  sus- 
pected by  all  Rome,  should  be  divorced  and  married 
to  him.  If  this  plan  was  entertained,  it  was  soon 
abandoned,  but  the  divorce  of  Lucrezia  was  accom- 
plished at  the  end  of  December,  1497,  by  what  all 
Italy  called  open  perjury. 


Savonarola  Denounces  the  Curia.       239 

Meantime  Savonarola,  fearing  to  draw  the  interdict 
upon  Florence,  was  silent,  while  the  government  was 
using  every  effort  to  have  his  excommunication 
annulled.  But  the  wrath  of  Alexander  was  impla- 
cable. So  far  from  restoring  Savonarola,  he  even 
threatened  to  demand  that  he  be  surrendered  for 
punishment  at  Rome.  Then  Savonarola's  patience 
was  exhausted,  and  on  Christmas  day,  after  six 
months'  silence,  he  said  mass  and  gave  communion 
to  a  vast  congregation.  Soon  after  he  announced 
that  he  would  preach,  beginning  on  Septuagesima 
Sunday  (February  n,  1498).  The  Vicar  of  the 
Archbishop  forbade  any  one  to  attend  the  sermon  on 
penalty  of  being  denied  confession,  the  sacrament, 
and  burial  in  consecrated  ground.  But  the  Signory 
sent  him  word  that  it  would  be  well  for  him  to  keep 
quiet.  The  preacher  discussed  the  authority  of  the 
Pope,  and,  again  protesting  his  orthodoxy  and  his 
Catholicity,  asserted  the  right  of  every  honest  con- 
science to  resist  unjust  commands.  "When  I  re- 
flect," he  cried,  "  on  the  life  led  by  priests,  I  am 
constrained  to  weep.  O  my  brethren  and  my  chil- 
dren, shed  tears  for  the  woes  of  the  Church,  so  that 
the  Lord  may  call  the  priests  to  repentance,  for  it  is 
plain  that  terrible  chastisement  awaits  them.  The 
tonsure  is  the  seat  of  all  iniquity.  It  begins  in  Rome, 
where  the  clergy,  who  make  mock  of  Christ  and  the 
saints,  are  worse  than  Turks  and  Moors.  Not  only 
do  they  refuse  to  suffer  for  the  Lord's  sake,  but  men 
traffic  with  the  sacraments.  At  this  day  there  is  a 
trade  in  benefices,  which  are  sold  to  the  highest  bid- 
der! Think  ye  that  Jesus  Christ  will  any  longer 


240  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

permit  this  ?  Woe,  woe  to  Italy  and  to  Rome !  Come, 
come,  O  priests !  Come,  my  brethren,  let  us  do  our 
best  to  revive  a  little  the  love  of  God !  '  O  father, 
we  shall  be  cast  into  prison;  we  shall  be  done  to 
death.'  So  let  it  be.  They  may  kill  me  as  they 
please,  but  they  will  never  tear  Christ  from  my  heart. 
I  am  ready  to  die  for  my  God.  Thou  hast  been  in 
Rome  and  dost  know  the  life  of  these  priests.  Tell 
me,  wouldst  thou  hold  them  to  be  pillars  of  the 
Church,  or  temporal  lords?  Have  they  not  courtiers 
and  grooms  and  horses  and  dogs  ?  Are  not  their  man- 
sions full  of  tapestries  and  silks,  of  perfumes  and  lack- 
eys? Seemeth  it  to  thee  that  this  is  the  Church  of 
God?  Their  vainglory  filleth  the  world,  and  their 
avarice  is  equally  vast.  They  do  all  things  for  gold. 
O  Lord,  Lord,  smite  them  with  thy  sword ! " 

This  was  war  to  the  death,  and  the  monk  felt  him- 
self called  of  God  to  it.  The  last  day  of  carnival  he 
gave  the  sacrament  to  a  great  crowd  and  went  up 
into  a  high  pulpit  in  the  open  square.  Holding  the 
host  on  high,  he  prayed,  "  O  Lord,  if  my  deeds  be 
not  sincere,  if  my  words  be  not  inspired  by  thee, 
strike  me  dead  on  the  instant."  Never  had  the  re- 
sults of  his  preaching  been  greater.  Each  new  dis- 
course was  printed  and  carried  over  all  Italy  and  the 
world.  The  wrath  of  the  Pope  was  intense.  The 
Florentine  ambassador  wrote  from  Rome  how  he  had 
burst  out  in  a  fury  before  many  of  the  cardinals, 
threatening  to  ruin  the  Republic  and  the  friar  to- 
gether. Every  enemy  of  the  city  was  up  in  arms 
against  her,  and  civil  discord  was  threatening  within. 
The  friar  was  as  much  hated  as  loved.  The  Com- 


The  Haunting  Fear  of  the  Popes.      241 

pagnacci,  the  lewd  fellows  of  the  baser  sort  who  dis- 
liked puritan  laws  and  wanted  back  again  the  old 
debaucheries  of  the  carnival;  the  Arrabbiati,  who 
wanted  to  overthrow  the  Republic  and  set  up  an 
oligarchy  of  their  own  faction ;  the  Greys,  or  adher- 
ents of  the  Medici,  were  united  in  only  one  thing, 
their  dislike  of  Savonarola  and  his  followers,  who 
were  called  the  Piagnoni  or  Snivellers.  Their  puri- 
tan inquisition  was  doubtless  very  irksome  to  all  who 
did  not  share  their  exalted  zeal.  And  so  on  the  1 7th 
of  March  a  new  Signory  inhibited  Savonarola  from 
preaching.  He  obeyed,  but  turned  to  his  last  resort, 
the  General  Council,  threatened  by  many  reformers, 
feared  by  every  Pope  for  two  generations. 

The  theory  of  Conciliar  Supremacy,  victorious  at 
Constance,  promulgated  with  greater  emphasis  and 
clearness  at  Basle,  had  been  buried  when  the  dis- 
credited remnant  of  that  Council  broke  up  in  1449. 
But  its  spectre  would  not  down,  and  rose  threaten- 
ingly amid  the  triumphs  and  feasts  of  the  autocratic 
Papacy.  It  was  doubtless  held  by  the  great  body 
of  the  French  clergy  as  a  part  of  Gallicanism  or  the 
local  independence  of  the  national  Church  under 
its  own  hierarchy,  which  had  been  established  by 
the  Pragmatic  Sanction  of  1438.  Even  in  Ger- 
many, whose  princes  weakly  surrendered  the  con- 
cordats of  Constance  and  Basle  in  the  Vienna  con- 
cordat of  1448,  there  were  still  many  defenders  of 
the  idea  that  the  Pope  was  not  the  absolute  mon- 
arch of  the  visible  Kingdom  of  God,  but  the  consti- 
tutional ruler  of  the  Church.  Every  Pope  since 
Nicholas  V.  had  taken  pains  directly  or  indirectly  to 


242  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

deny  the  doctrine  of  Conciliar  Supremacy  and  evade 
the  decrees  of  the  Church  which  provided  for  the 
regular  assembly  of  a  General  Council.  Pius  II.  ex- 
pressly forbade  any  appeal  from  his  authority  to  a 
General  Council.  Almost  every  reformer  that  we 
have  mentioned,  and  many  others,  had  reiterated  the 
demand  and  longing  for  a  common  meeting  of  Chris- 
tendom to  reform  the  Church.  Every  conclave  of 
cardinals  had  before  the  election  of  another  Vicar  of 
Christ  renewed  the  demand  or  agreement  that  the 
decisions  of  former  conclaves  and  councils  in  regard 
to  the  calling  of  a  new  General  Council  for  the  re- 
form of  the  Church  in  head  and  members  should  be 
carried  out.  And  every  Pope  had  broken  the  agree- 
ment or  evaded  the  demand.  In  1482  a  Dominican, 
Andreas,  Bishop  of  Crain  in  Epirus,  having  first 
vainly  tried  to  persuade  Sixtus  IV.  to  summon  a 
Council,  posted  on  the  doors  of  the  cathedral  of 
Basle  a  letter  to  the  Pope  and  a  call  to  Christendom 
to  meet  in  General  Council  for  the  reform  of  the 
Church  in  head  and  members.  He  was  arrested 
and  imprisoned  for  life.  The  banished  Cardinal 
Giuliano  della  Rovere  had  been  trying  for  several 
years  to  call  Europe  to  a  General  Council  to  hear 
his  complaints  against  Alexander  VI.  Savonarola 
himself  had  often  hinted  in  vague  and  veiled  terms 
of  a  General  Council,  and  written  of  it  privately  to 
the  King  of  France,  and  it  was  therefore  no  new  or 
heretical  idea  that  he  now  determined  to  realize. 

He  made  copies  of  a  letter  to  the  princes  of 
Europe,  which  had  been  ready  for  some  time,  and 
prepared  to  send  them  by  trusty  messengers  to  the 


In  the  Hands  of  His  Foes.  243 

rulers  of  France,  Germany,  Spain,  England,  and 
Hungary.  They  began : 

"  The  moment  of  vengeance  has  arrived.  The 
Lord  commands  me  to  reveal  new  secrets  and  to 
make  known  to  the  world  the  peril  which  threatens 
the  bark  of  St.  Peter.  .  .  .  Now  I  hereby  testify,  in 
the  word  of  the  Lord,  that  this  Alexander  is  no 
Pope,  nor  can  be  held  as  one ;  inasmuch  as,  leaving 
aside  the  mortal  sin  of  simony,  .  .  .  and  likewise 
putting  aside  his  other  manifest  vices,  I  declare  that 
he  is  no  Christian  and  believes  in  no  God,  the  which 
surpasses  the  height  of  all  infidelity."  These  charges 
he  offered  to  prove,  not  by  argument  and  evidences 
alone,  but  by  signs  and  portents  given  by  God  to  attest 
his  truth.  Most  of  these  letters  were  never  sent,  but 
one  of  his  messengers  on  the  road  to  France  was 
robbed  by  Milanese  bandits,  and  his  despatches  sold 
to  the  Duke,  who  sent  them  to  the  Pope. 

And  at  the  very  moment  when  he  was  betrayed 
to  his  worst  enemy  abroad,  Savonarola  fell  into  the 
power  of  his  cruel  foes  at  home.  The  Franciscans 
had  from  the  beginning  opposed  his  work.  And  a 
certain  friar,  Francesco  of  Puglia,  of  that  order,  after 
denouncing  him  in  the  pulpit  as  a  heretic  and  a  false 
prophet,  challenged  him  to  the  ordeal  by  fire. 
Domenico,  who  had  taken  Savonarola's  place  as 
preacher,  at  once  accepted  the  challenge  in  his  mas- 
ter's stead.  It  was  a  glorious  opportunity  for  the 
friar's  enemies,  and,  though  the  Franciscan  tried  to 
draw  back,  and  Savonarola  at  first  rebuked  his  friend's 
zeal,  the  keen  politicians  soon  gave  such  official 
recognition  to  the  affair  that  one  side  or  the  other 


244  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

had  to  publicly  submit  and  withdraw.  The  whole 
city  fell  into  a  fever  of  excitement,  and  after  a  long 
discussion  it  was  finally  decided  in  the  City  Council 
that  the  trial  by  fire  should  take  place  as  the  easiest 
way  of  quieting  the  uproar;  though  one  speaker 
sarcastically  suggested  that  the  trial  be  by  water,  as 
less  dangerous,  for  if  the  friar  could  go  through  it 
without  getting  wet,  he  would  certainly  join  in  ask- 
ing his  pardon.  Savonarola  had  tried  to  prevent  the 
trial,  but  when  it  was  determined  he  felt  assured 
that  his  champion  would  walk  through  unharmed. 
The  same  enthusiasm  spread  to  his  followers,  and  the 
brethren  of  San  Marco  addressed  a  letter  to  the 
Pope,  saying  that  three  hundred  of  them,  besides 
many  laymen,  were  willing  to  pass  through  the  fire 
in  defence  of  their  master's  doctrines.  The  Francis- 
can champion,  a  substitute  for  the  original,  had  as- 
serted from  the  first  that  if  he  entered  the  flames  he 
should  perish,  and  when  the  day  arrived,  and  all 
Florence  waited  for  the  spectacle,  he  did  not  come. 
After  hours  had  been  passed  in  unprofitable  discus- 
sion, darkness  fell  on  a  wearied  and  disappointed 
city.  The  champion  of  San  Marco  had  been  ready 
and  eager  for  the  trial,  but  the  enemies  of  Savonarola 
spread  abroad  the  report  that  he  had  balked  the 
multitude  of  their  miracle  or  their  tragedy.  It  was 
a  crime  unforgivable  by  the  Florentines,  and  Savo- 
narola was  delivered  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies. 

The  afternoon  of  the  next  day  a  mob  stormed  the 
convent.  They  found  no  easy  task,  for  some  lay 
brethren  had  concealed  arms  in  the  cellar  a  few  days 
before.  Savonarola  wanted  to  bear  all  things,  and 


Put  to  the  Torture.  245 

calling  the  brethren  to  the  choir,  intoned  the  chant 
"Salvum  fac  populum  tuum  Domine."  But  there 
was  a  stern  resistance  in  many  parts  of  the  building. 
A  young  German  monk  wrested  a  weapon  from  the 
hands  of  one  of  the  mob  and  laid  about  him  mightily, 
chanting  at  every  stroke,  "  Salvum  fac  populum  tuum 
Domine."  When  they  broke  into  the  sacristy,  the 
praying  monks  beat  them  out  again  with  the  heavy 
crucifixes  and  candlesticks.  The  steps  of  the  choir 
were  stained  with  blood,  and  the  church  rang  to  the 
shots  of  the  arquebuse  which  two  brethren  had 
planted  by  the  side  of  the  great  crucifix  on  top  of 
the  altar.  In  the  midst  of  it  all  the  police  arrested 
Savonarola  by  order  of  the  Signory. 

He  was  put  to  the  torture.  Just  what  he  said  we 
do  not  know,  for  it  is  evident  that  the  published  con- 
fessions were,  like  the  published  confessions  of  Joan  of 
Arc,  garbled.  But  we  know  enough  to  believe  that, 
like  Joan  of  Arc,  he  admitted  that  his  voices  and  visions 
were  false.  And  in  this  he  denied  his  own  belief. 
For  he  had  always  thought  he  was  a  prophet,  for  which 
all  the  people  at  one  time  held  him.  It  does  not 
appear,  however,  that  there  was  anything  in  his  pre- 
dictions more  supernatural  than  in  those  of  Joan  of 
Arc,  and  his  voices  and  visions  were  like  those  of 
many  men  of  his  time.  Columbus  heard  a  voice 
from  heaven  bidding  him  sail  on.  That  most  en- 
gaging  gossip  and  man  of  science,  Cardano,  had  the 
most  implicit  faith  in  his  most  extraordinary  dreams, 
and  believed  himself,  like  Socrates,  to  be  directed  by 
a  demon.  Benevento  Cellini  tells  us  his  father  had 
"  a  certain  touch  of  prophecy,  which  was  doubtless 


246  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

a  divine  gift,"  and  that  amiable  scoundrel  himself, 
when  shut  up  in  prison  with  nothing  else  to  do,  had 
vivid  and  splendid  visions  of  the  glory  of  God. 
And  visions  are  recorded  in  more  than  one  biogra- 
phy of  our  own  century.  Savonarola's  confessions, 
that  through  all  his  desires  to  reform  the  Church 
there  was  the  hope  of  "  doing  great  things  in  Italy 
and  beyond  the  borders,"  "  of  preaching  things  at 
the  Council  of  which  I  might  be  proud,"  of  thinking 
himself  "  higher  than  any  cardinal  or  Pope  if  he  had 
reformed  the  Church,"  were  probably  true  enough. 
For  the  last  infirmity  is  found  as  commonly  as  else- 
where in  the  noblest  minds  which  labor  with  perfect 
honesty  for  pure  religion. 

The  failure  of  the  miracle  caused  his  downfall. 
The  false  confession  that  he  had  deceived  the  people 
by  his  visions  brought  death.  For  the  multitude  had 
not  followed  him  to  learn  truth,  but  to  hear  politics. 
His  rapid  and  violent  reformations  had  in  the  popu- 
lar heart  no  roots  of  true  religion.  The  Florentines 
were,  after  all,  only  better  in  degree  than  the  rest  of 
the  Italians.  They  lacked  the  first  national  quality 
of  patience,  and  would  bear  no  yoke  except  the  yoke 
that  tyranny  held  firm  upon  their  shoulders.  Even 
the  monks  of  San  Marco  wrote  to  the  Pope  asking 
forgiveness  for  having  followed  Savonarola.  "  The 
fineness  of  his  doctrine ;  the  rectitude  of  his  life,  the 
holiness  of  his  manners ;  his  pretended  devotion,  and 
the  good  results  he  obtained  by  purging  the  city  of 
immorality,  usury,  and  every  species  of  vice;  the 
different  events  which  confirmed  his  prophecies  in  a 
manner  beyond  all  human  power  and  imagination, 


Rejected  of  Men.  247 

and  which  were  so  numerous  and  of  such  a  nature 
that  we  could  never  have  been  able  to  renounce  our 
faith  in  him  unless  he  himself  had  made  retraction 
declaring  that  his  words  were  not  inspired  by  God  " 
— these  were  the  things  they  alleged  in  excuse  for 
having  been  his  friends. 

Savonarola's  cup  of  bitterness  was  almost  full,  but 
he  still  had  to  endure  more  tortures  at  a  fresh  trial 
before  two  Papal  commissioners,  who  were  sent,  ac- 
cording to  the  talk  of  Rome,  with  instructions  to  put 
him  to  death,  "  even  if  he  were  another  John  the 
Baptist."  On  the  28th  of  May,  1498,  with  two  of 
his  brethren,  he  was  degraded  and  unfrocked  by  his 
Bishop,  handed  over  to  the  secular  arm  as  heretic  and 
schismatic  by  the  Papal  commissioners,  and  hanged 
and  burned  by  the  Signory  of  Florence. 


PERIOD   III. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE    FALL    OF   THE    HOUSE    OF    BORGIA. 

N  order  to  understand  the  subsequent  his- 
tory of  the  family  of  Borgia,  which  had 
bought  the  Papacy,  we  must  remember 
that  such  family  histories  were  common 
enough  in  Italy  during  the  last  half  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  The  spectacle  of  Alexander  and 
Caesar  ruling  in  the  name  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  over 
his  disciples  is  not  an  isolated  phenomenon.  The 
Church  did  not  breed  this  disease  within  herself. 
Rather  the  weakness  brought  on  by  her  own  cor- 
ruption was  unable  to  resist  the  contagion  of  the 
times.  Just  as  the  della  Rovere  (Sixtus  IV.,  Julius 
II.),  terrible,  sagacious,  magnificent,  patrons  of  art, 
are  a  picture  of  the  good  tyrant  of  their  generation, 
so  the  Borgias  are  a  perfect  example  of  the  bad 
tyrant.  For  a  certain  character  of  wickedness  was 
common  enough  among  the  large  and  small  tyrants 
of  the  age  to  form  the  bearers  of  it  into  a  distinct 
type,  monstrous,  inhuman,  incredible,  only  to  be 
matched  in  the  pages  of  Suetonius  and  Tacitus.  It 
is  needless  to  suggest  illustrations.  John  Webster's 
"  Duchess  of  Malfi  "  or  "  White  Devil "  gives  in 

248 


Moral  Condition  of  Italy.  249 

classic  form  a  clear  impression  of  the  type,  and  it  is 
etched  in  Browning's  little  poem,  "  My  Last  Duchess." 
The  insult  to  humanity  in  such  lives  was  made 
more  palpable  by  the  smallness  of  the  states  they 
ruled.  While  the  Caesars  filled  the  streets  of  Rome 
with  blood  and  their  villas  with  lust,  the  cities  of  the 
Empire, enjoy  ing  the  justice  of  their  municipal  govern- 
ments, heard  of  these  crimes  as  distant  rumors.  But 
the  tyrants  of  Italy  had  raised  their  power  on  the 
ruins  of  the  ancient  municipalities,  and  their  move- 
ments were  talked  over  by  every  gossip  of  the  little 
cities  of  which  they  were  masters.  It  does  not  seem 
unhistorical  to  see  in  the  flourishing  growth  of  such 
a  type  under  such  circumstances  very  strong  evidence 
that  the  social  organism  of  Italy  at  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century  was  rotted  through  and  through. 
When  an  indictment  is  drawn  against  a  whole 
people  by  historians,  the  bill  of  particulars  is  apt  to 
be  made  up  of  special  instances  of  private  or  public 
wickedness  which  have  been  recorded  because  they 
were  unusual,  or  else  of  vague  lamentations  by  con- 
temporaries over  the  degeneracy  of  the  times.  But 
the  future  historian  who  should  regard  simply  the 
record  of  murders  and  lynchings  in  the  United  States 
for  the  past  ten  years,  or  read  only  certain  extracts 
from  Ruskin  or  Carlyle,  would  hardly  get  a  fair  view 
of  the  morality  of  the  Americans.  It  is  possible  to 
collect  many  isolated  notices  which  indicate  a  des- 
perate condition  of  moral  depravity  in  Italy  at  the 
close  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Venice  had  eleven 
thousand  courtesans,  a  proportion  which  would  give 
over  one  hundred  thousand  to  New  York.  In  the 


250  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

year  1459  seven  princes  received  Pius  II.  at  Florence. 
All  of  them  were  bastards.  Such  facts  as  these  seem 
to  be  significant ;  but  who  shall  say  whether  they  are 
not  offset  by  the  abundant  evidences  of  a  beautiful 
family  life,  the  memories  of  gracious  and  gentle  wo- 
men, of  noble  bishops  and  pious  teachers,  the  records 
of  the  continuous  foundation  of  hospitals,  whose  size 
and  care  of  the  sick  filled  Luther  with  astonishment? 
As  Burckhardt  suggests,  "  The  ultimate  truth  with 
respect  to  the  character,  the  conscience,  the  guilt  of 
a  people  remains  forever  a  secret."  But  surely  the 
political  conditions  of  Italy  in  the  fifteenth  century 
suggest  very  strongly  that  lust  and  luxury,  or  some- 
thing else,  had  weakened  among  the  people  the 
fundamental  qualities  of  courage,  patience,  and  self- 
sacrifice.  How  else  could  the  vile  and  monstrous 
regiment  of  many  of  her  tyrants  have  been  borne,  or 
only  broken  by  lawless  revolts  which  made  the  last 
state  of  the  cities  worse  than  the  first  ? 

An  Italian  tyrant  of  this  most  evil  type  was  now 
Vicar  of  Christ,  and  when  the  friar  of  San  Marco  was 
dead  he  had  nothing  to  fear.  With  Savonarola  in 
freedom,  Alexander  had  cause  to  remember  the  fate 
of  John  XXIII.  Had  a  man  of  the  same  will,  elo- 
quence, and  sincerity  appeared  in  the  north,  farther 
from  Rome  and  amid  a  people  of  greater  patience  and 
tenacity,  he  could  not  have  been  so  silenced.  For  the 
wor,ld  was  filled  with  fears  and  hopes  of  some  great 
catastrophe.  On  the  banks  of  the  Tiber  and  the 
Rhine  prophecies  were  circulated,  dark  and  threaten- 
ing as  the  Florentine  monk's,  of  some  awful  judg- 
ment of  God  upon  the  degenerate  Church.  The 


Marriage  of  Ccesar.  251 

King  of  France  had  a  medal  struck  bearing  the  in- 
scription, "  I  will  destroy  Babylon,"  and  the  rulers 
of  Spain  and  Germany  threatened  schism  more  than 
once. 

But  when  Savonarola  was  gone  no  man  was  left  to 
give  point  to  the  anger  of  the  world,  and  the  spectre 
of  a  General  Council  being  laid,  Alexander  could 
devote  himself  to  arranging  a  marriage  for  Caesar. 
The  King  of  Naples  refused  with  indignation  the 
hand  of  his  daughter,  but  finally  promised  the  hand 
of  a  bastard  of  his  house  to  the  divorced  Lucrezia, 
and  they  were  married  in  July,  1498.  The  next 
month  Caesar  publicly  laid  aside  the  cardinal's  pur- 
ple, and  in  December  journeyed  to  France.  The 
money  for  his  costly  outfit  had  been  obtained  by 
selling  Church  offices,  confiscating  the  estates  of  ac- 
cused prelates,  and  by  the  fines  of  three  hundred 
people  absolved  from  sudden  accusation  of  heresy. 
The  new  King  of  France,  who  wanted  the  help  of 
the  Pope  for  a  second  invasion  of  Italy,  received  him 
with  honor,  made  him  Duke  of  Valence,  and  married 
him  to  a  sister  of  the  King  of  Navarre.  The  Pope, 
Venice,  and  France  formed  a  league  for  mutual  gain. 
France  was  to  have  Milan;  Venice,  Cremona;  and 
Caesar,  French  troops  to  conquer  the  Romagna,  sup- 
press its  petty  tyrants,  ancient  vassals  of  the  Papacy, 
and  form  a  principality  for  himself. 

On  the  6th  of  October,  1499,  King  Louis  entered 
Milan  in  triumph ;  and  a  lot  of  Italian  princelings 
followed  the  invading  army  as  jackals  follow  the  lion. 

Already  the  Pope  had  declared  that  the  lords  of 
Romagna  had  forfeited  their  lands  for  failure  to  pay 


252  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

tribute,  and  the  plan  of  the  Borgia  was  openly  de- 
clared. Caesar  possessed  no  mean  resources  for  his 
undertaking.  In  France  he  had  become  reconciled 
to  della  Rovere,  the  only  powerful  cardinal  who  still 
remained  in  opposition.  And  the  truce  was  sealed 
by  the  marriage  of  the  Cardinal's  nephew  to  a  Papal 
niece.  The  house  of  Este,  the  oldest  in  Italy,  rulers 
of  Ferrara,  backed  all  his  undertakings,  and  the  heir 
of  the  house  was  soon  to  marry  his  sister  Lucrezia. 
He  was  in  very  friendly  correspondence  with  the 
Gonzaga  of  Mantua,  and  two  years  later  they  were 
to  betroth  their  daughter  to  his  son.  The  King  of 
France  gave  him  troops,  including  a  thousand  Swiss 
mercenaries,  and,  with  his  own  hired  soldiers,  he 
mustered  eight  thousand  men.  The  treasures  of  the 
Church  furnished  the  sinews  of  war.  On  the  1st 
of  December  he  took  the  town  of  Imola,  and  in  Jan- 
uary his  army  entered  Forli.  The  gifts  of  the  two 
hundred  thousand  pilgrims  who  came  to  obtain  the 
blessing  of  Alexander  VI.  were  timely,  for  Caesar's 
expenses  were  over  eighteen  hundred  ducats  a  day, 
and  a  further  gain  was  made  by  levying  on  all  ec- 
clesiastical incomes  the  "  Turkish  tenth  "  for  a  threat- 
ened crusade. 

At  the  end  of  February  the  sudden  return  of  the 
Duke  of  Milan  compelled  the  French  King  to  recall 
the  troops  loaned  to  Caesar,  and  he  returned  to 
Rome  in  triumph.  All  the  cardinals  received  him 
as  he  rode  in  at  the  head  of  his  mercenaries,  and  the 
city  gave  in  his  honor  a  great  spectacle — the  triumph 
of  Julius  Cassar.  He  went  at  once  to  kneel  at  the 
feet  of  his  father.  He  was  clad,  Spanish  fashion,  in 


A  Family  Quarrel.  253 

black,  and  greeted  the  old  man  in  his  own  beloved 
tongue.  The  Pope  was  hysterical  for  joy,  weeping 
and  laughing  in  a  breath,  to  see  his  family  once  more 
united  around  him.  Five  months  later,  as  Lucrezia's 
husband,  the  young  Neapolitan  Prince,  came  out  of 
St.  Peter's  Church,  assassins  fell  upon  him  with  dag- 
gers, left  him  for  dead  on  the  steps,  and  springing 
upon  the  horses  of  some  mounted  men  waiting  in  the 
street,  made  off.  The  Prince  dragged  himself  to  the 
Pope  and  accused  Caesar  of  the  deed.  His  wife  and 
his  sister-in-law  tended  his  sick-bed,  and  for  fear  of 
poison  cooked  his  food  themselves.  The  Pope  set  a 
guard  of  sixteen  men  for  his  defence.  Caesar  came 
to  see  him,  and  as  he  went  out  turned  and  said, 
"  What  does  not  happen  at  midday  may  happen  at 
night."  A  few  days  later  he  came  again,  drove 
Lucrezia  and  Sancia  from  the  room,  called  in  his 
hangman,  and  the  wounded  man  was  strangled  in  his 
bed.  There  is  uncertainty  about  the  details  of  this 
story, — accurate  details  of  such  occurrences  would 
probably  be  very  difficult  to  obtain, — but  there  was 
no  mystery  about  this  murder  in  the  house  of  Borgia. 
Alexander  acknowledged  that  the  final  murderous 
assault  had  been  made  by  Caesar,  but  said  he  had 
great  provocation.  There  is  no  need  to  seek,  like 
the  common  talk  of  Rome,  for  strange  and  dark 
motives.  It  may  have  been  the  sudden  flaming  out 
of  personal  hatred,  or  Caesar  may  have  wanted  to  use 
his  sister's  hand  for  the  third  time  in  his  desperate 
game  of  ambition. 

Whether  Alexander's  attempts  to  defend  the  vic- 
tim were  real  or  feigned,  he  accepted  the  deed  when 


254  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

it  was  done,  and  turned  to  the  task  of  gathering  gold 
for  Caesar's  army.  The  next  month  twelve  new 
cardinals  paid  ten  thousand  florins  apiece  for  their 
red  hats.  And  the  winter  campaign  of  Caesar  was 
so  vigorous  that  in  the  spring  the  Pope  named 
him  Duke  of  Romagna,  with  Imola,  Forli,  Pesaro, 
Rimini,  Faenza,  Cesena,  and  Fano  for  his  dominions, 
and  thirty-six  thousand  florins  yearly  income  paid  by 
Florence  to  purchase  peace. 

Caesar  became  supreme  in  Rome,  and  the  city 
trembled  before  his  will.  His  father  smiled  on  his 
pleasures  enough  to  be  present  at  a  most  scandalous 
banquet,  followed  by  a  performance  which  was  called 
in  the  diaries  and  letters  of  the  times  "  the  dance  of 
the  fifty  courtesans."  A  Venetian  who  dared  to 
write  a  pamphlet  on  the  Pope  and  his  son  was  found 
strangled  in  the  Tiber.  Alexander  expressed  his 
regret  to  the  ambassador,  and  explained  that  his  son 
was  "  a  man  of  good  disposition,  but  constitutionally 
unable  to  bear  an  insult." 

It  must  have  been  during  this  year  that  a  letter 
from  a  friend  in  Rome  to  a  certain  Sylvius  de  Sabel- 
lis,  a  refugee  at  the  imperial  court,  was  printed  in 
Germany  and  spread  over  the  world.  It  describes 
the  Pope  as  worse  than  Mohammed,  an  Antichrist, 
than  whom  no  more  open  enemy  of  God,  opposer  of 
Christ,  and  subverter  of  faith  and  religion  could  pos- 
sibly be  imagined.  "  All  things  are  for  sale  with 
this  Pontifex.  One  trembles  to  relate  the  monstrous 
lusts,  insulting  both  God  and  man,  which  are  openly 
practised  in  his  house.  His  son  Caesar  goes  about 
surrounded,  like  a  Turk,  with  harlots,  and  guarded  by 


Ins  tans  Tyrannus.  255 

armed  men.  At  a  word  from  him  any  one  is  killed 
and  thrown  into  the  Tiber,  or  poisoned,  and  his 
property,  both  in  and  out  his  house,  seized.  The 
thirst  and  rapine  of  his  servants  are  satiated  with 
human  blood,  and  for  fear  of  their  cruelty  the  no- 
blest families  are  leaving,  the  best  citizens  are  hidden, 
and,  unless  we  are  succored  from  such  ills  by  the 
Emperor  as  soon  as  possible,  needs  must  that  every 
one  take  thought  to  abandon  the  city  and  flee." 

In  June  the  fishers  found  a  group  of  dead  bodies 
in  the  Tiber,  among  them  two  young  boys  of  eigh- 
teen and  fifteen.  They  were  Astorre  and  Octavian 
Manfredi,  who  had  surrendered  Faenza  the  year  be- 
fore, on  solemn  promise  of  freedom,  and  been  lying 
in  the  castle  of  San  Angelo  ever  since. 

Four  days  later  Caesar  marched  on  another  cam- 
paign. He  took  Urbino  and  Camerino  by  treachery, 
plundered  the  empty  palace  of  the  first,  and  threw 
the  fratricidal  tyrant  of  the  second  into  prison. 
Every  little  city  trembled  before  his  craft  and  a  will 
that  feared  nothing  human  or  divine.  Meanwhile, 
at  Rome,  Alexander  was  providing  the  finances. 
At  this  time  died  the  Cardinal  Ferrari,  who  had 
amassed  enormous  wealth  in  the  service  of  the  Bor- 
gia. The  Pope  seized  his  riches,  and  all  Rome  said 
that  the  white  powder  of  the  Borgia  had  been  his 
death.  No  one  pitied  him  much,  for  the  satirists 
decorated  his  grave  with  such  epigrams  as  this: 
"  Here  lies  Ferrarius.  The  earth  has  his  body,  the 
bull  [crest  of  the  Borgias]  his  goods,  hell  his  soul." 

In  the  midst  of  his  greatest  success  a  sudden  dan- 
ger shook  Caesar's  triumph.  His  mercenary  captains, 


256  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

petty  tyrants  who  had  sought  refuge  in  his  service, 
formed  a  conspiracy,  revolted  under  the  lead  of  the 
Cardinal  Orsini,  raised  twelve  thousand  men,  and 
utterly  defeated  Caesar's  troops  under  the  command 
of  two  trusty  Spanish  captains.  But  Caesar,  who 
never  accomplished  very  much  with  the  sword  in 
pitched  battle,  was  not  at  the  end  of  his  resources. 
He  skilfully  played  upon  the  jealousies  and  fears  of 
the  confederates,  and  while  negotiations  were  going 
on  his  agents  were  quieting  his  rebellious  cities. 
One  of  them,  Messer  Ramiro,  used  in  this  work  a 
desperate  cruelty,  and  in  the  end  of  December,  when 
he  had  successively  blotted  out  all  dangerous  ele- 
ments in  the  cities  assigned  to  him,  Caesar  called  him 
to  conference  at  Cesena.  Four  days  later  his  dead 
body  was  found  in  the  market-place,  cut  in  two  pieces 
— a  broken  tool. 

Meantime,  at  Rome,  the  nervous  Pope  was  plung- 
ing into  wild  amusements.  One  night,  according  to 
the  diary  of  his  master  of  ceremonies,  he  watched  a 
procession  of  indecent  masks  which  halted  long  be- 
fore his  windows.1  On  others  Cardinal  Orsini,  se- 
cret head  of  the  league  against  the  Borgias,  joined 
him,  according  to  reports  from  the  Venetian  ambas- 
sador, at  the  gaming-tables  in  the  Vatican,  when 
certain  fair  ladies  sat  among  the  prelates.  Alexan- 
der was  anxiously  awaiting  news  from  Caesar,  who 
was  trying  to  persuade  the  revolted  generals  to  meet 
him  at  Sinigaglia  for  a  conference  which  should 

1  Burchard  hated  the  memory  of  Alexander  VI.,  but  that  is  no 
good  reason  for  doubting  the  accuracy  of  his  unadorned  reports  of 
such  notorious  occurrences  as  the  above. 


Nothing  Succeeds  Like  Success.        257 

change  the  truce  into  lasting  peace.  Deluded  at  last 
by  his  solemn  pledges,  they  entered  the  town  on 
the  3  ist  of  December,  leaving  their  troops  scattered 
in  detachments  at  various  distances  from  the  walls. 
The  instant  they  entered  the  doors  of  the  castle  they 
were  seized  and  disarmed.  Two  of  them  were 
strangled  that  night,  one  weeping,  and  the  other 
begging  as  a  last  favor  that  the  Pope  would  absolve 
him  and  bless  his  soul. 

When  Alexander  received  secret  word  of  the  suc- 
cess of  this  treachery  all  his  court  marked  the  sudden 
merriment  of  his  manner.  On  the  3d  of  January 
Cardinal  Orsini  was  cast  into  prison,  his  palace  seized, 
and  his  eighty-year-old  mother  driven  into  the  streets, 
where  she  wandered  long  before  any  one  dared  to 
aid  her.  A  quick  succession  of  arrests  followed,  the 
house  of  each  man  being  at  once  pillaged  and  its 
contents  of  plate  and  other  valuables  carried  to  the 
Vatican.  On  the  i8th  of  January  Caesar  heard  that 
the  Roman  enemies  were  safely  in  hand,  and  at  once 
strangled  the  two  remaining  prisoners  of  Sinigaglia, 
Paolo  Orsini  and  the  Duke  of  Gravina;  and  on  the 
22d  it  was  announced  in  Rome  that  the  Cardinal 
Orsini  had  died  in  prison.  In  the  end  of  February 
Caesar,  having  finished  the  reduction  of  the  towns  of 
his  duchy,  entered  Rome.  He  was  the  most  noted 
man  in  Italy.  A  clever  diplomat  like  Machiavelli 
wondered  at  his  statecraft,  the  King  of  France  called 
the  affair  of  Sinigaglia  worthy  of  a  Roman,  and 
Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  glad  to  be  in  his  service  as 
engineer. 

On  the  29th  of  March  the  Venetian  ambassador 
Q 


258  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

wrote  that  eighty  new  offices  had  just  been  createi 
in  the  Curia  and  sold  immediately  for  seven  hundred 
and  sixty  florins  apiece.  On  the  loth  of  April 
Cardinal  Michiel  died,  after  two  days  of  sudden  ill- 
ness. Before  dawn  his  house  was  stripped,  and  thrc« 
days  later  the  Venetian  ambassador,  going  to  th* 
Vatican,  found  the  Pope  superintending  an  inventory 
of  his  movable  property  in  the  hall.  On  the  i8th  <?'? 
May  the  Pope's  secretary,  Troccio,  fled  from  the  city . 
He  was  overtaken  by  a  ship  at  Corsica,  brought  back, 
and  strangled  by  Micheletto  in  prison,  while  Caesai 
looked  on  through  a  window.  He  was  accused  oi 
betraying  the  Borgias  to  France.  His  estate  was 
confiscated.  On  the  8th  of  June  the  body  of  Jacopc 
Santa  Croce,  with  the  head  beside  it,  lay  all  day  on 
the  bridge  of  San  Angelo.  His  property  was  con- 
fiscated and  his  wife  and  children  left  penniless.  On 
the  5th  of  August  the  Cardinal  Monreale,  nephew  oi 
the  Pope,  died  suddenly.  Alexander  was  his  heir, 
and  the  Venetian  ambassador  reported  that  Rome 
estimated  the  estate  at  one  hundred  thousand  florins, 
and  said,  "  The  Cardinal  has  also  been  sent  the  way 
that  all  the  other  well-fattened  ones  have  gone." 
These  were  violent  or  crafty  men,  but  a  great  part 
of  their  crimes  had  been  committed  to  serve  the 
Borgias,  and  it  is  small  wonder  that  a  great  fear 
fell  on  Rome.  No  man  of  prominence  could  die 
of  the  malignant  malarial  fever  which  raged  that 
summer  that  awe-struck  gossip  did  not  whisper, 
"  The  poison  of  the  Borgias  " ;  and  all  rich  men  be- 
gan to  tremble  for  their  lives. 

In  the  midst  of  triumph,  when  their  feet  were  on 


The  Full  Cup.  259 

the  necks  of  their  enemies  and  they  had  swept  all 
the  gains  of  victory  into  their  own  coffers  by  de- 
stroying the  servants  who  knew  its  secrets,  the  end 
suddenly  came.  On  the  night  of  his  nephew's  death 
Alexander  went  with  Caesar  to  sup  in  the  garden  of 
Cardinal  Hadrian  of  Corneto,and  on  the  1 2th  of  August 
both  fell  ill.  The  next  morning  Alexander  was  bet- 
ter and  played  cards  a  part  of  the  day.  It  was  only 
a  brief  rally  for  the  debauchee  of  seventy-three. 
Whether  the  report  is  true  that  the"  Borgia  had 
drunk  by  mistake  of  the  poison  they  had  prepared 
for  their  rich  host,  who  was  also  violently  ill,  cannot 
now  be  determined.  Most  probably  they  all  caught 
in  the  night  air  a  malignant  malarial  fever.  At  all 
events,  Alexander's  cup  was  full,  and  on  the  i8th  of 
August  he  died.  All  Rome  spoke  in  joy  and  horror 
of  his  death,  of  the  awful  appearance  of  the  swollen 
corpse,  of  the  little  black  dog  that  ran  ceaselessly  to 
and  fco  through  the  halls  of  the  Vatican  the  night 
before  he  died.  The  Marquis  of  Mantua  wrote  to  his 
wife  that  Alexander  was  heard  in  his  last  illness  to 
murmur,  "  I  am  coming.  It  is  right ;  only  wait  a 
little."  The  bystanders  remembered  that  he  had 
made  a  bargain  with  the  devil  to  give  his  soul  for 
twelve  years  of  the  Papacy,  and  the  bond  was  four 
days  overdue.  The  story  was  widely  accepted,  and 
even  among  those  who  rejected  it  the  pious  every- 
where felt  with  shuddering  relief  that  the  Pope  must 
have  gone  to  hell. 

Alexander  really  died  after  confession,  the  com- 
munion, and  extreme  unction,  and  if  he  called  on 
any  one,  it  was  doubtless  the  Virgin  Mary;  for  he 


260  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

had  always  considered  himself  as  under  her  special 
protection.  He  had  a  picture  painted  of  her,  with 
the  face  of  his  mistress,  the  beautiful  young  Julia 
Farnese ;  and  three  years  before  had  presented  her 
altar  with  three  hundred  florins  at  a  special  service 
of  thanksgiving  for  saving  his  life  when  a  fireplace 
fell  on  him.  For  Alexander  was  not  an  atheist,  and 
in  all  probability  never  once  thought  of  himself  as  an 
unbeliever.1 

Caesar  said  afterward  to  Machiavelli  that  he  had 
made  preparations  for  every  possible  contingency 
except  that  he  should  be  ill  when  his  father  died. 
As  it  was,  he  could  only  be  carried  by  the  six  Span- 
ish cardinals  into  the  Vatican.  From  his  sick-bed  he 
issued  orders  to  concentrate  all  his  mercenaries  at 
Rome  and  keep  them  under  arms.  He  was  the  first 
to  hear  of  his  father's  death,  and  his  trusty  hangman, 
Micheletto,  put  a  dagger  to  the  throat  of  Cardinal 
Casanova  and  compelled  the  surrender  of  the^key  of 
the  Papal  treasure.  Two  chests  full  of  gold  pieces 
were  instantly  carried  off  to  Caesar's  bedside.  Even 
before  he  had  recovered,  he  held  court,  surrounded 
by  his  six  Spanish  cardinals,  as  if  he  were  a  sovereign, 
and  finally  promised  the  College  of  Cardinals  to  leave 
Rome  in  three  days,  on  condition  of  keeping  the  title 
of  General  of  the  Church. 

On   the   22d   of  September,    1503,  the  Conclave 

1  In  this  connection  a  section  from  the  preface  of  Richardson's 
"  Clarissa  Harlowe  "  (1749)  might  be  pertinent:  "  It  will  be  proper 
to  observe,  for  the  sake  of  such  as  may  apprehend  hurt  to  the  morals 
of  youth  from  the  more  finely  written  letters,  that  the  gentlemen, 
though  professed  libertines,  .  .  .  are  not,  however,  infidels  or 
scoffers."  Quoted  in  "  Ten-Minute  Sermons." 


How  are  the  Mighty  Fallen  /         261 

elected  the  nephew  of  Pius  II.,  who  took  the  title  of 
Pius  III.  He  was  broken  in  health,  and  died  in  less 
than  a  month. 

Meantime  Caesar  had  come  back  to  press  his  fortune. 
But  his  foes  among  the  Roman  nobility  demanded 
his  trial,  his  mercenaries  began  to  fall  away  to  richer 
lords,  and  when  Pius  died  Caesar  was  only  saved 
from  death  by  the  strong  walls  of  San  Angelo.  For 
the  Pope's  son  was  so  hated  that  an  enemy  killed 
one  of  his  servants  to  wash  in  his  blood.  He  still 
remained,  however,  a  power  to  be  reckoned  with,  and 
the  Cardinal  della  Rovere  visited  him  in  the  castle, 
and  they  made  a  bargain.  Caesar  was  to  give  the 
votes  of  the  six  Spanish  cardinals,  and  in  return  to 
be  named  Standard-bearer  of  the  Church.  Della 
Rovere  bought  the  rest  of  the  votes,  and  was  unani- 
mously elected  Pope,  taking  the  name  of  Julius  II. 

Then  the  fortunes  of  Caesar  sank  lower  and  lower. 
The  once  haughty  nepot  begged  an  interview  with 
the  Duke  of  Urbino,  whose  inheritance  he  had  seized, 
stood  cap  in  hand  before  him,  fell  on  his  knees  and 
begged  pardon,  promised  with  many  excuses  to  give 
back  all  he  had  stolen  from  his  palace,  and  even  re- 
ceived his  chamberlain  with  a  bearing  as  servile  as  it 
had  once  been  proud.  He  feared  for  his  life.  Vol- 
unteering for  the  service  of  Spain,  he  was  carried  to 
Madrid  and  thrown  into  prison.  Escaping  two  years 
later,  he  found  refuge  at  the  court  of  his  brother-in- 
law,  King  of  Navarre,  and  in  three  months,  at  the 
age  of  thirty-one,  fell  in  petty  battle  with  a  rebellious 
crown  vassal. 


PERIOD    III. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

HUMANISM  IN  EUROPE  FROM  THE  ACCESSION  OF 
SIXTUS  IV.  TO  THE  DEATH  OF  ALEXANDER  VI. 
(1471-1503) — THE  FLORENTINE  ACADEMY 
AND  THE  OXFORD  SCHOOL — FABER  STAPU- 
LENSIS  AND  HIS  PUPILS  AT  PARIS — JOHN 
REUCHLIN  AND  THE  OLDER  HUMANISTS  OF 
GERMANY — ERASMUS. 

|HREE  chief  tendencies  are  observable  in 
the  history  of  Italian  Humanism.  They 
can  be  traced  from  the  first,  but  be- 
come very  distinct  with  each  succeed- 
ing generation.  There  were  the  pagan 
Humanists,  like  Valla  and  Filelfo — the  men  who 
lived  in  the  moral  atmosphere  of  heathenism  and 
practised  not  only  the  style,  but  the  vices,  of  anti- 
quity. We  have  seen  in  the  person  of  Savonarola  a 
learned  puritanism  which  desired  to  take  from  the 
New  Learning  only  what  might  help  to  renew  reli- 
gion and  purify  morals.  We  must  now  consider  a 
middle  Humanism,  which  hoped  to  make  the  world 
better  by  uniting  the  New  Testament  and  the  phi- 
losophy of  antiquity. 

The  origin  of  this  party  is  plainly  marked  in  the 
262 


Gemistos  Platon.  263 

visit  of  Gemistos  Platon  to  the  Council  of  Florence 
in  1438.  He  came  in  the  train  of  the  Greek  Em- 
peror, to  arrange  a  union  between  the  Greek  and 
Latin  Church  as  the  price  of  help  against  the  Turks. 
He  was  a  native  of  Constantinople,  eighty-three 
years  old,  and  reputed  the  most  learned  man  who 
spoke  the  Greek  tongue.  He  did  but  little  for  the 
cause  of  union,  but  much  for  that  cause  which  lay 
nearest  his  heart — the  inauguration  of  a  new  religion, 
founded  on  the  teaching  of  Plato,  which  was  to  unite 
East  and  West,  Mohammedan  and  Christian.1 

Plato  was  then  almost  unknown  in  Italy,  and  the 
charm  of  the  old  man's  conversation  carried  away 
Cosimo  de'  Medici.  He  determined  to  educate  Mar- 
siglio  Ficino,  the  six-year-old  son  of  his  physician, 
to  become  the  translator  and  interpreter  of  Plato  to 
Western  Christendom.  Platon  published  in  Italy 
several  works  pointing  out  the  superiority  of  Plato 
over  Aristotle.  In  these  it  appeared  that  Platon's 
system  of  the  world  was  antichristian,  for  his  idea  of 
the  eternal  existence  of  an  abstract,  unchangeable 
necessity  seemed  to  leave  no  place  for  miracle,  re- 
sponsibility, or  redemption.  Such  opinions  awoke  a 
storm  of  opposition,  and  the  defenders  of  Aristotle 
used  to  the  fullest  the  charge  of  heresy  against  the 
assailer  of  the  philosophy  of  all  the  orthodox.  Pla- 
ton returned  to  Greece,  and  died  in  the  middle  of 
the  century,  nearly  a  hundred  years  old.  Some  ten 
years  later  Sigismondo  Pandelfo  Malatesta,  Lord  of 
Rimini  and  General  of  Venetian  mercenaries  against 
the  Turk,  brought  the  bones  of  Platon  to  Rimini,  and 
1  As  he  is  reported  to  have  said  in  Florence. 


264  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

buried  them  in  the  Church  of  San  Francesco,  which 
was  his  family  tomb. 

From  Platon  proceeded  two  schools  of  thought 
which,  despite  their  common  origin,  grew  to  diamet- 
rical opposition ;  even  as  the  hierarchical  tendency 
which  formed  the  Papal  system,  and  the  predestina- 
tion theology  which  the  Protestant  Reformers 
opposed  to  it,  were  both  justly  supported  by  the 
authority  of  Augustine.  Pomponius  Leto,  one  of 
Platon's  scholars,  became  the  founder  of  the  Roman 
Academy  and  the  centre  of  the  neopagans.  Under 
the  patronage  of  Lorenzo,  the  grandson  of  Cosimo, 
the  Florentine  Academy,  led  by  Marsiglio  Ficino, 
became  the  centre  of  true  Platonic  influences.  For 
Ficino  did  not  stop  with  the  half-Platonism  of  Platon. 
In  the  original  he  found  the  spiritual  philosophy  with 
which  he  Platonized  the  New  Testament,  but  did  not 
destroy  it.  The  great  festival  of  the  Florentine 
Academy  on  the  birthday  of  Plato  was  usually  held 
in  the  beautiful  villa  Careggi,  in  whose  rooms,  open- 
ing on  one  side  into  the  shady  porticoes  of  the  court 
with  its  gently  running  fountains,  and  looking  out  on 
the  other  upon  Florence  and  the  Tuscan  hills,  Lo- 
renzo entertained  the  little  company  with  a  dinner  and 
music,  followed  by  reading  and  discussion  of  Plato's 
works.  In  the  summer  heat  they  sought  refirge  in 
the  woods,  and  under  the  shade  of  the  lofty  planes 
beside  the  mountain  brook  discussed  the  things  of  the 
soul  while  their  eyes  traversed  the  vale  of  the  Arno, 
seeking  vainly  the  gleam  of  the  distant  sea. 

Ficino  lectured  on  Plato  from  the  pulpit  of  the 


Giovanni  Pico  della  Mirandola.        265 

cathedral,  "  discussing  the  religious  philosophy  of 
our  Plato  here  in  the  midst  of  the  church,  and  medi- 
tating in  the  holy  places  on  the  holy  truth."  For  to 
him  the  ideas  of  Plato  were  prophecies  in  philo- 
sophic form  of  the  teaching  of  Christ,  and  he  found  in 
the  life  of  Socrates  types  of  the  life  of  Jesus;  such 
as  the  cock  he  offered  before  death,  the  cup  he 
drank,  and  his  last  words.  At  the  age  of  forty  he 
was  ordained  priest,  and  though  he  Platonized  the 
Gospel,  there  is  little  doubt  that  he  ardently  desired 
to  promote  the  influence  of  Christ  in  the  world  by 
training  men  who,  like  Him,  were  followers  of  truth. 
This  personal  relation  to  Christ,  which  grew  upon 
the  head  of  the  Florentine  Academy  in  spite  of  the 
mystic  thinking  and  allegorizing  interpretation  that 
made  Jesus  teach  the  theology  of  Plato,  appears 
very  plainly  in  Giovanni  Pico,  Prince  of  Mirandola 
(1463-94).  From  his  youth  he  evinced  great  apti- 
tude for  study,  and  came  to  Rome  at  the  age  of 
twenty-four,  a  heralded  prodigy  of  learning.  He 
posted  nine  hundred  theses  for  discussion,  offering  in 
princely  fashion  to  pay  the  expenses  of  any  dispu- 
tants who  desired  to  come  from  a  distance.  But 
Innocent  VIII.  was  moved  to  prohibit  the  discussion, 
and  a  theological  commission  pronounced  thirteen  of 
the  propositions  heretical.  Pico  published  an  apol- 
ogy written  in  twenty  days,  marked  by  wide  learning 
and  a  superficial  subtlety.  But  he  was  not  declared 
free  from  heresy  till  just  before  his  death.  This  ex- 
perience was  for  the  youth  the  end  of  licentious  and 
frivolous  living.  He  turned  to  virtue,  burned  his 


266  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

book  of  wanton  verses  £f  love  and  other  like  fanta- 
sies, and  gave  himself  fervently  to  the  study  of  Holy 
Scripture.  He  undertook  it  under  the  burden  of 
profound  erudition.  He  had  read  libraries  of  the  old 
fathers  of  the  Church;  he  had  mastered  all  the 
cognition  of  philosophy  both  of  the  old  teachers  and 
the  new  schools ;  he  knew  many  languages ;  he  was 
very  learned  in  all  the  subtle  and  cunning  disputa- 
tions of  the  Cabala.  He  became  a  master  of  alle- 
gorical interpretation,  and  found  all  the  philosophy 
of  Plato  in  the  books  of  Moses.  He  made  a  cipher 
system,  apparently  somewhat  similar  to  that  by 
which  a  Western  student  has  drawn  the  secret  hir- 
tory  of  the  times  of  Elizabeth  from  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare.  For  by  manipulations  of  the  Hebrew 
letters  of  the  first  word  of  Genesis  he  concludes  that 
Moses  meant  to  say  by  it,  "  The  Father,  in  the  Son 
and  by  the  Son,  the  beginning  and  end,  or  rest,  cre- 
ated the  supercelestial,  the  empyrean,  and  the  sub- 
lunary sphere,  fitly  joined  together." 

That  he  might  be  undiverted  from  his  studies  he 
sold  his  princedom  to  his  nephew  and  gave  great 
part  of  the  price  to  the  poor.  He  was  content  with 
mean  fare,  but  retained  somewhat  of  his  old  state  in 
the  use  of  silver  plate.  He  prayed  often,  and  gave 
plenteously  to  relieve  the  miseries  of  such  needy 
people  as  he  came  by  the  knowledge  of.  In  Holy 
Week  he  scourged  himself  for  the  cleansing  of  his  old 
offences  and  in  the  remembrance  of  the  great  benefit 
of  the  passion  and  death  of  Christ  suffered  for  our 
sake.  To  a  man  accustomed  to  vice,  who  sought 
discourse  with  him  on  the  nature  of  virtue,  he  said, 


England  and  Humanism.  267 

"  If  we  had  ever  before  our  eyes  the  painful  death  of 
Christ  which  he  suffered  for  love  of  us ;  and  then  if 
we  would  again  think  upon  our  own  death,  we  should 
surely  beware  of  sin  " ;  and  the  man  forsook  his  evil 
ways.  Pico  once  told  his  nephew,  as  they  walked  in 
an  orchard  at  Ferrara,  that  when  he  had  finished 
certain  books  he  meant  to  give  all  his  substance  to 
the  poor,  and  with  the  crucifix  in  hand  to  walk  bare- 
foot about  the  world,  preaching  Christ.  When  he 
came  to  die,  in  the  flower  of  his  youth,  the  priest, 
holding  up  the  crucifix,  inquired  whether  he  firmly 
believed  it  to  be  the  image  of  him  .that  was  very 
God  and  very  man,  together  with  the  other  doctrines 
that  belong  to  the  faith  of  the  Church.  Pico  an- 
swered that  he  not  only  believed,  but  certainly  knew 
it,  and  said  he  was  glad  to  die,  because  death  made 
an  end  of  sin.  He  lay  then  with  a  pleasant  and  merry 
countenance,  and  in  the  very  pangs  of  death  spoke  as 
though  he  saw  the  heavens  opened.  He  made  the 
poor  of  the  hospital  of  Florence  heir  of  all  his  lands.1 
About  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century  another 
transalpine  land  began  to  feel  the  impulse  of  the 
New  Learning.  It  was  carried  to  England  by  men 
like  Linacre,  physician  to  Henry  VIII.,  and  Grocyn, 
who,  having  studied  Greek  in  Italy,  was  the  first  to 
give  good  instruction  in  it  at  Oxford.  But  it  was 
first  made  widely  effective  by  John  Colet.  He  was 
descended  on  both  sides  from  gentlefolk  and  inherited 


1  In  this  account  of  Pico  I  have  borrowed  the  diction  of  Sir 
Thomas  More's  translation  of  his  "  Life"  by  his  nephew,  Giovanni 
Francesco  Pico ;  published  in  the  Tudor  Library  with  an  introduction 
by  J.  M.  Rigg,  Esq.,  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  to  which  I  am  also  indebted. 


268  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

a  large  fortune.  On  finishing  his  course  at  Oxford 
he  went  to  Italy  in  1493,  and  came  home  in  1496. 
We  have  no  details  of  his  travels  and  studies.  He 
returned  apparently  unimpressed  by  the  arts  of  Italy, 
except  music,  which  he  loved,  and  possessed  of  the 
spirit  which  had  mastered  the  Florentine  Platonists— 
the  spirit  of  intense  devotion  to  the  Bible  and  per- 
sonal loyalty  to  Christ.  He  settled  at  Oxford,  where 
he  began  to  lecture  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 
These  expositions  were  very  different  from  the  scholia 
in  isolated  texts,  or  the  diffuse  discussion  of  logical 
distinctions  unknown  to  the  writers,  which  formed  the 
common  method  of  interpretation  of  the  books  of  the 
Bible.  His  philological  remarks  are  illustrated  from 
his  reading,  including  patristic,  classic,  and  contem- 
porary writings.  But  he  does  not  stop  short  with 
such  comments.  He  is  continually  turning  aside  into 
practical  applications  ;  no  "  threads  of  nine  days  long 
drawn  from  an  anti-theme  of  half  an  inch,"  but  true 
parentheses  of  passionate  feeling.  He  had  a  keen 
historical  sense,  also,  and  tries  constantly  to  keep  the 
readers  in  touch  with  the  personality,  the  thought, 
and  the  feeling  of  Paul  and  the  Romans,  and  thus 
make  the  sentences  vivid  and  potent. 

A  man  of  Colet's  power  and  learning  gathered 
scholars  round  him,  not  only  hearers,  but  friends. 
The  most  noted  of  these  was  Thomas  More,  born  in 
1478.  His  father,  Sir  Thomas  More,  placed  him  in 
the  household  of  the  Lord  Chancellor,  the  Arch- 
bishop Morton.  There  his  wit  soon  distinguished 
him,  and  his  master  was  wont  to  say  to  his  guests, 
"  This  child  here  waiting  at  table  will  prove  a  mar- 


Thomas  More.  269 


vellous  man."  At  Morton's  wish  he  was  sent  to 
Oxford,  where  Colet  formed  such  a  high  opinion  of 
his  powers  that  he  was  afterward  accustomed  to 
speak  of  him  as  the  one  genius  in  England.  More 
was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1500,  and  began  practice 
in  London.  He  used  the  right  of  teaching  conferred 
by  his  degree  to  give  a  course  of  lectures  on  Augus- 
tine's "  City  of  God  "  in  the  Church  of  St.  Lawrence, 
of  which  Grocyn  was  Rector.  They  attracted  much 
attention  and  were  well  attended,  and  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five  he  was  sent  to  Parliament.  When  the 
royal  grant  for  the  wars  was  about  to  be  passed  in 
silence,  young  More,  daring  to  attack  it,  so  rallied 
the  House  that  the  final  vote  was  only  a  fourth  of 
the  amount  asked.  Because  of  the  King  s  displea- 
sure, he  found  it  wise  to  retire  from  public  life.  He 
thought  of  a  monastery,  but  by  the  advice  of  Colet, 
who  came  up  to  London  about  this  time  to  take  the 
duties  of  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  he  married  and  remained, 
as  the  phrase  was,  "  in  the  world."  He  occu- 
pied his  enforced  leisure  with  study,  being  chiefly 
attracted  by  the  life  and  works  of  Pico  della  Miran- 
dola.  Thus  he  remained  in  obscurity,  solacing  him- 
self with  his  family,  his  books,  and  his  friends,  until 
the  accession  of  Henry  VIII.  (1509)  set  him  free  from 
fear  and  idleness. 

Of  all  the  transalpine  lands,  France  was  the  first 
to  begin  the  study  of  Greek — an  unmistakable  sign 
of  the  stirring  of  the  spirit  of  the  New  Learning. 
But  the  first  Frenchman  who  learned  enough  Greek 
to  do  anything  with  it  seems  to  have  been  Faber 
Stapulensis  (Jacques  Lefevred'  Etaples),  1455-1536. 


270  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Having  acquired  the  title  of  Doctor  at  Paris,  he 
went  to  Italy  in  1492,  and  probably  spent  two  years 
there,  visiting  Florence,  Rome,  and  joining  in  the 
circle  of  scholars  who  gathered  round  the  printing- 
house  of  Aldus  Manutius  in  Venice.  The  knowledge 
which  he  brought  back  he  devoted  more  and  more  to 
the  study  of  the  Bible,  abandoning  in  its  favor  the 
classic  authors  who  had  once  been  his  favorites.  He 
was  a  frail  little  man,  bent  over  by  much  study,  with 
a  beautiful  face,  at  once  earnest  and  gentle.  The 
scholars  who  came  to  learn  of  him  in  Paris  all  loved 
him,  and  of  the  opponents  he  soon  aroused,  none 
seems  to  have  felt  anything  but  respect  for  the 
purity  and  honesty  of  his  life  and  the  natural  kindli- 
ness of  his  disposition.  For  whether  among  poor 
begging  scholars,  or  with  his  friend,  the  scion  of  the 
great  house  of  Briconnet,  whose  forefathers  had  been 
officers  of  State  and  Church  for  generations,  or  as 
court  chaplain  to  the  princes  of  Navarre,  Faber  bore 
himself  "  at  manhood's  simple  level."  He  was  firmly 
devoted  to  the  system  and  worship  of  the  Church, 
by  principle  opposed  to  schism,  and  by  nature  averse 
to  revolution.  But  the  more  he  studied  the  Scrip- 
ture the  more  it  became  evident  to  him  that  the 
preaching  of  the  clergy  and  the  method  of  training 
them  needed  reform,  and  during  the  closing  years  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  while  he  was  teaching  in  Paris 
or  making  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  Rome,  his  know- 
ledge of  the  Bible  and  his  convictions  that  the  world 
and  the  Church  were  ignorant  of  it  grew  steadily. 
Very  likely  he  may  have  already  formed  the  hope  of 
giving  the  Bible  to  the  people  of  France  i'n  their 


Education  in  Germany.  271 

own  tongue.  At  all  events  he  was  forming  that 
clearer  method  of  exegesis  which  was  the  inheritance 
of  his  spiritual  descendants.  Afterward,  developed 
by  the  genius  of  Calvin,  it  was  the  contribution  of 
the  French  to  the  Protestant  Reformation,  of  univer- 
sal influence  even  upon  Anglicans,  Lutherans,  and 
Arminians  who  rejected  the  characteristic  French 
theology. 

But  it  was  in  Germany  that  Humanism  was  to 
find  its  second  home.  Before  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  while  the  New  Learning  in  France  and 
England  was  scarcely  more  than  the  possession  of  a 
little  group  of  scholars  at  one  university,  the  spirit  of 
Humanism  was  appearing  here  and  there  through 
the  cities,  the  universities,  and  the  pulpits  of  the 
whole  north  and  centre  of  the  German  Empire.  The 
"  forerunners  "  had,  for  the  most  part,  brought  it  over 
the  Alps  as  a  help  in  their  efforts  to  promote  the 
better  study  of  theology  and  the  reform  of  religion. 
But  by  the  seventies  it  had  become  in  Germany  the 
educational  mode  for  all  active  spirits  to  train  the 
human  mind,  not  according  to  the  narrow  rubrics  of 
the  scholastic  system,  but  to  giv.e  it  a  liberal  educa- 
tion. How  broad  that  ideal  was  may  be  seen  by  the 
book  which  the  Emperor  Maximilian  (born  in  1459 
and  afterward  the  idol  and  patron  of  the  Humanists) 
caused  to  be  made  to  describe  his  education.  The 
pictures  of  the  Weiss  Konig  show  the  Prince  study- 
ing everything,  from  theology  to  magic  and  from 
fortification  to  astrology.  How  prevalent  the  ideal 
was  is  apparent  in  the  single  observation  that  this 
first  generation  of  German  Humanists,  men  born 


272  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

about  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  found  at 
Oxford,  at  Paris,  and  in  the  universities  along  the 
Rhine  and  the  Danube  that  impulse  which  the  Fore- 
runners had  crossed  the  Alps  to  find  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Arno  and  the  Tiber. 

They  were  conscious  also  of  a  strong  national  and 
patriotic  feeling,  and  were  worthy  successors  of 
Gregor  of  Heimburg.  This  patriotic  feeling  began 
to  appear  in  a  tendency  to  .write  in  German  and  speak 
to  the  common  people.  Yet  it  was  not  a  polemic 
age.  Those  of  the  Older  German  Humanists  who 
lived  over  into  the  sixteenth  century  were  sum- 
moned to  range  themselves  in  two  great  intellectual 
wars ;  but  the  last  third  of  the  fifteenth  century  was 
a  time  of  comparatively  quiet  labor,  when  the  new 
leaven  was  slowly  leavening  the  whole  lump.  This 
secret  process  appears  plainly  in  two  signs :  the  suc- 
cessive creation  at  the  more  progressive  universities, 
like  Erfurt,  Heidelberg,  Freiburg,  and  Basle,  of  the 
new  chair  of  "  Eloquence  and  Poetry  " ;  and  in  the 
foundation  of  learned  societies,  which  were  either 
local,  uniting  the  Humanists  of  a  single  city,  or  of 
wider  range,  like  the  two  great  societies  of  the  Rhine 
and  the  Danube.  These  societies  kept  alive  their 
common  feeling  by  an  extensive  learned  correspon- 
dence, and  expressed  their  common  purpose  by  the 
attempted  publication  of  literary  monuments  of 
classic  antiquity  or  the  ancient  Latin  chronicles  of 
Germany. 

Among  the  Older  Humanists  of  Germany  the 
three  tendencies  which  we  have  observed  among  the 
men  of  the  New  Learning  in  Italy  make  themselves 


Conrad  Celtes.  273 


*  apparent,  but  not  in  the  same  proportion.  For,  while 
the  pagan  tendency  ruled  almost  absolutely  at 
Rome,  and  perhaps  prevailed  everywhere  in  Italy 
except  in  Florence,  it  is  much  less  prominent  in 
Germany.  Its  best  representative  is  Conrad  Celtes 
(1459-1509).  He  finished  the  education  he  had 
received  at  various  German  universities  by  six 
months  in  Italy,  and  on  his  return  received  from  the 
city  of  Nuremberg  the  poet's  crown.  The  next  ten 
years  he  spent  in  wandering  over  Germany,  teaching 
eloquence  and  poetry,  now  in  one  and  now  in  an- 
other university,  .until  at  last  he  received  a  longed-for 
call  to  the  University  of  Vienna,  where  he  spent  ten 
years  as  head  of  the  new  College  of  Mathematics 
and  Poetry.  There  he  died  at  the  age  of  fifty,  worn 
out  by  the  excesses  of  an  evil  life.  He  wrote  oc- 
casionally on  theological  themes,  and  even  made  pil- 
grimages in  hope  of  being  cured  of  disease,  but  he 
cared  little  for  religion.  He  was  a  true  epicurean, 
bent  on  enjoying  in  this  life,  "  which  before  was 
nothing,  and  shall  again  become  nothing,"  "  sleep, 
wine,  friendship,  and  philosophy."  Patriotism  was 
his  master  passion.  His  wanderings  were  partly 
caused  by  tfte  wish  to  see  all  parts  of  the  fatherland, 
and  he  divides  his  poem  "  Amores,"  which  seems  to 
have  been  as  promiscuously  inspired  as  the  love 
poetry  of  Burns,  into  four  books,  named,  indeed, 
after  four  heroines,  but  arranged  "  according  to  the 
four  provinces  of  Germany."  He  advises  his  coun- 
trymen not  to  flock  over  the  Alps,  and  proudly  calls 
the  Italians  to  come  and  study  in  that  Germany 
which  had  given  to  letters  the  glorious  discovery  of 


274  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

printing,  was  the  seat  of  the  Empire  and  therefore1* 
the  true  home  of  laws,  and  would  soon  surpass  Italy 
in  poetry  and  eloquence.  The  great  unfinished 
work  of  his  life,  "  Germania  Illustrata,"  an  historical 
and  geographical  description  of  the  German  Empire, 
was  the  praise  of  the  fatherland ;  and  his  pleasure  in 
it  never  flagged. 

The  second  tendency  of  Humanism,  the  ecclesias- 
tical, whose  carriers  desired  to  use  the  New  Learn- 
ing as  a  better  tool  for  the  reform  of  morals  and 
religion,  was  more  powerful  in  the  first  generation  of 
German  Humanism  than  it  ever  was  in  Italy.  It  is 
well  represented  by  three  men  who  lived  as  friends 
in  and  about  the  city  of  Strassburg.  Jacob  Wim- 
pheling  (1450-1528)  was  educated  at  the  University 
of  Erfurt,  the  first  in  Germany  to  establish  a  chair  of 
"  Eloquence  and  Poetry."  There  he  found  the  New 
Learning  in  full  tide,  and  received  from  the  inscrip- 
tion in  a  church  of  the  city,  "  Noli  peccare  Deus 
videt,"  an  ineradicable  impression.  Returning  to  the 
University  of  Heidelberg,  he  pursued  the  study  of  the 
classics  without  direction  from  the  professors;  and 
when  Johann  von  Dalburg,  just  returned  from  Italy, 
was  made  Bishop  of  Worms  (1482),  and  began  to  re- 
form the  discipline  and  instruction  of  the  University, 
Wimpheling  became  his  right-hand  man.  He  also 
published  a  defence  of  the  Elector  Frederick,  whose 
efforts  to  reform  the  clergy  of  his  state  had  brought 
against  him  an  accusation  of  disrespect  to  the  Pope. 
Soon  after  Wimpheling  became  cathedral  preacher 
at  Speyer,  where  he  attacked  the  sins  ol  the  clergy 
and  people,  formed  association  and  correspondence 


Geiler  of  Ka  isersberg.  275 

with  all  the  men  of  the  New  Learning  within  reach, 
and  plunged  into  the  long  debate  over  the  Virgin 
Mary,  as  a  defender  of  the  Immaculate  Conception. 
From  these  labors  he  was  called  to  the  chair  of  Elo- 
quence and  Poetry  at  Heidelberg.  He  relinquished 
his  work  there  to  fulfil  his  promise  made  to  an  old 
friend  to  retire  with  him  to  a  hermitage.  But  the 
plan  was  stopped.  His  friend  was  suddenly  elected 
Bishop  of  Basle,  and  Wimpheling  was  persuaded  to 
settle  in  Strassburg  to  finish  an  edition  of  the  works 
of  Gerson  and  promote  the  cause  of  letters  and  re- 
ligion in  South  Germany. 

The  active  persuader  to  this  resolution  was  Geiler  of 
Kaisersberg  (1445-1510).  He  was  educated  at  the 
new  University  of  Freiburg,  where  he  seems  to  have 
been  too  much  of  a  dandy,  for  it  is  recorded  that  when 
he  became  a  magister  he  was  obliged  to  solemnly  swear 
that  for  two  years  he  would  not  wear  either  pointed 
shoes  or  a  certain*  kind  of  neckwear.  When  he  had 
finished  his  studies  at  Basle,  having  learned  gravity  as 
well  as  theology,  he  became  a  preacher  at  the  cathe- 
dral, and  soon  after  lectured  on  theology  at  Freiburg. 
This  position  he  relinquished  to  become  cathedral 
preacher  at  Strassburg.  There  he  gave  himself  for 
the  rest  of  his  life  to  the  attempt  to  reform  the 
morals  of  the  city.  In  his  sermons,  where  language 
so  frank  and  popular  as  sometimes  to  shock  even 
that  rude  age  is  sprinkled  with  quotations  from  the 
classics,  he  lashed  every  sort  of  sin  and  every  rank 
of  sinner.  The  prince  neglecting  religion  and  plun- 
dering the  people ;  the  small  tradesman  in  the  City 
Council  afraid  to  vote  according  to  his  conscience  for 


2  76  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

fear  of  losing  some  one's  custom ;  the  young  nobles 
who  stroll  into  church  with  falcon  on  wrist  and  dogs 
at  their  heels ;  the  big  merchants  who  form  trusts  to 
destroy  weak  rivals  and  raise  prices ;  the  citizens  who 
live  extravagantly  and  fail  to  pay  their  bills;  the 
grocers  who  give  short  weight ;  the  artisans  who  glibly 
promise  work  by  a  certain  day  and  never  intend  to 
keep  their  word ;  the  luxury  of  the  rich  who  dine  on 
bears'  claws  or  beavers'  tails  and  let  the  sick  poor 
die  in  misery  and  hunger ;  the  bishops  who  are  bish- 
ops of  purses,  not  of  souls ;  the  priests  who  heap  up 
benefices  and  think  only  of  usury ;  the  canons  who 
gossip  in  the  cathedral  during  mass,  and  wear  fine, 
clean  linen,  while  the  altar-cloth  is  dirty ;  the  monks 
who  keep  the  rule  of  mixing  water  with  their  wine 
by  pouring  a  drop  of  water  into  a  cask,  and  the  pen- 
ance of  flagellation  by  putting  on  a  heavy  jacket  and 
beating  themselves  with  foxes'  tails,  or  whose  young 
men  give  a  banquet  and  a  dance  for  the  neighboring 
convent  in  honor  of  their  first  celebration  of  mass — 
all  these  are  vigorously  painted  in  his  discourses. 
He  preached  little  but  morality,  for  he  shared  in  the 
opinion  that  doctrine  was  not  for  the  laity;  but  he 
was  a  fervently  orthodox  Catholic  and  a  stern  de- 
fender of  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  Church. 
It  was  to  aid  in  this  work  of  reformation  that  he 
stopped  Wimpheli.ng  on  his  way  to  a  hermitage,  and 
secured  the  appointment  of  their  common  friend, 
Sebastian  Brant  (145  7-1 521),  as  Chancellor  of  the  city 
of  Strassburg.  Brant  had  for  some  years  been  pro- 
fessor of  Latin  and  semi-official  poet  of  the  city  of 
Basle,  and  all  three,  Geiler  in  the  pulpit,  Wimpheling 


The  Ship  of  Fools.  277 

by  his  efforts  to]  improve  the  education  of  the  clergy, 
and  Brant  by  his  satiric  writings,  began  a  crusade  for 
the  purification  of  society,  the  reform  of  ecclesiastical 
abuses,  and  the  renewal  of  religion. 

Brant  was  the  poet  of  the  trio.  Like  his  friends, 
he  was  warmly  devoted  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Im- 
maculate Conception  of  the  Virgin,  and  plunged 
hotly  into  the  controversy,  which,  in  spite  of  the  bull 
of  Sixtus  IV.  forbidding  the  two  parties  to  accuse 
each  other  of  heresy  because  the  point  was  one  on 
which  the  dogma  of  the  Church  was  not  explicit, 
had  reached  a  very  high  degree  of  bitterness.  Brant 
as  a  defender  of  the  glory  of  the  Virgin  led  all  the 
rest  in  zeal  and  wrath.  The  most  influential  of 
Brant's  writings  was  his  satiric  poem  of  the  "  Narren- 
schiff,"  or  "  Ship  of  Fools."  It  is  called  a  poem, 
though  it  is  of  the  kind  of  poetry  which  has  been  de- 
scribed as  only  a  more  difficult  way  of  writing  prose. 
It  is  an  inchoate  collection  of  separate  pieces  of 
verse,  imperfectly  held  together  by  the  vague  image 
of  a  ship  filled  with  fools  and  sailing  without  chart 
or  compass  for  the  land  of  Cocagne.  Passages  from 
the  Bible,  from  Plutarch,  from  Latin  authors,  popu- 
lar proverbs,  sage  reflections,  sketches  of  character, 
are  thrown  together  with  no  regard  to  art.  He 
describes  all  kinds  of  fools.  Book-collectors  who 
never  read,  adulterers,  the  proud,  those  who  waste 
their  time  in  hunting,  lovers  of  money,  those 
who  cannot  keep  a  secret,  the  sick  who  will 
not  obey  their  physicians,  blasphemers  and  de- 
spisers  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  drunkards,  gluttons, 
gamblers,  and  harlots,  the  envious,  the  mockers,  the 


278  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

lazy,  the  ungrateful — all  to  whom  God  or  a  philos- 
opher might  say,  "  Thou  fool,"  are  sketched  in  a  style 
which  appears  now  both  rude  and  weak,  but  which 
was  very  effective  in  its  day.  The  book  was  pub- 
lished at  Basle  in  1494,  and  in  1498  it  had  appeared 
from  the  press  of  six  cities  in  five  original  and  three 
stolen  and  interpolated  editions.  It  was  received 
with  a  storm  of  applause  by  the  Humanists,  and  the 
Latin  translation  of  it  ran  through  three  editions  and 
was  translated  twice  into  French  within  two  years  of 
its  appearance.  Ten  years  later  it  was  put  into  Eng- 
lish verse  by  Alexander  Barclay  and  into  English 
prose  by  Henry  Watson.  It  was  preached  upon  and 
imitated  until  "  The  Fool "  became  a  stock  figure  in 
the  literature  of  the  early  fifteenth  century. 

Between  men  like  this  trio  of  friends  and  the  pagan 
Humanists  like  Celtes  stood  the  Middle  Party,  who 
hoped  to  demonstrate  the  reasonableness  of  virtue  and 
religion.  The  core  of  the  party  was  composed  of  men 
who,  like  the  Florentine  Academy,  strove  to  unite 
the  mystic  philosophy  of  Greece  and  the  New  Tes- 
tament. Theirbest  representative  is  Johann  Reuchlin. 
He  was  educated  at  the  city  school  of  Pforzheim,  his 
birthplace,  went  to  the  University  of  Freiburg,  and 
afterward  to  Paris  as  the  companion  of  the  younger 
son  of  his  Prince.  Paris  was  then  the  chief  univer- 
sity of  the  world,  and  her  degrees  conferred  a  special 
distinction.  She  had  appointed  a  Greek  teacher,  the 
first  north  of  the  Alps,  and  Reuchlin  was  able  to 
make  the  poor  beginnings  of  a  knowledge  of  that 
language.  From  Paris  he  went  to  Basle  in  1475, 
where,  under  the  private  instructions  of  a  wandering 


Johann  Reuchlin.  279 

Greek,  he  learned  enough  to  write  a  Greek  letter  to 
a  friend  in  Strassburg,  who  wrote  to  his  fellow-stu- 
dent Brant  that  he  could  understand,  but  could  not 
answer  it.  Reuchlin's  education  as  a  doctor  of  laws 
being  completed,  he  entered  into  the  service  of 
Count  Eberhard  of  Wurtemberg,  an  uneducated 
prince  with  a  love  for  learning,  who  kept  scholars 
employed  in  translating  for  him  the  chief  works  of 
classic  antiquity.  Reuchlin  was  one  of  the  retinue 
that  accompanied  Eberhard  to  Rome,  and  until  the 
death  of  the  good  Prince  he  served  as  councillor  and 
ambassador  in  many  affairs  of  State.  He  then  passed 
into  the  service  of  Philip  of  the  Pfalz,  also  a  patron  of 
the  Humanists,  for  whom  he  made  a  third  trip  to 
Italy.  On  his  previous  journey  he  had  met  Marsiglio 
Ficino  and  Pico  della  Mirandola,  and  on  this  third 
trip  he  completed  in  Rome  the  studies  in  Hebrew 
which  he  had  begun  with  a  Jewish  court  physician 
during  an  embassy  to  the  Emperor  Maximilian.  *  It 
was  in  1502  that  he  received  an  appointment  as  one 
of  the  three  judges  of  the  Swabian  League,  a  very 
honorable  post  which  he  filled  for  twelve  years. 

But  while  he  had  been  acquiring  the  reputation  as 
a  clever  jurist  and  able  statesman  which  gained  this 
appointment,  he  had  also  been  earning  greater  fame 
as  a  scholar.  His  first  work,  at  the  age  of  twenty, 
was  a  small  Latin  lexicon,  which  in  thirty  years 
went  through  twenty-five  editions.  A  succession  of 
translations  from  Greek  into  Latin  showed  his  know- 
ledge of  Greek.  His  comedy  of  "  Henno,"  written 
for  the  students  of  Heidelberg,  showed  a  clear  Latin 
style  and  held  the  boards  of  student  theatricals  for 


280  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

many  years.  And  his  work  "  On  the  Wonder-work- 
ing Word "  had  made  known  his  knowledge  of 
Hebrew  and  the  mystic  teaching  of  the  Cabala. 
For  he  followed  Pico  della  Mirandola,  whom  he  called 
the  most  learned  man  of  the  day,  in  the  exposition 
of  the  Platonic  and  rabbinic  mysticism,  feeling  that 
in  it  was  to  be  found  the  best  illustration  and  de- 
fence of  Christianity.  These  labors  had  in  the  early 
nineties  brought  such  renown  that  the  Emperor 
Maximilian  offered  to  ennoble  his  family,  to  make 
him  an  imperial  Pfalzgraf,  with  the  power  of  acting 
as  judge  on  all  imperial  questions,  and,  further,  of 
conferring,  on  his  own  responsibility,  ten  doctor's 
degrees.  Reuchlin  refused  the  title  with  thanks,  in 
which  his  younger  brother,  an  honest  scholar  and 
clergyman  of  moderate  abilities,  joined  him.  He 
preferred  not  to  disturb  by  material  decoration  that 
spiritual  dignity  which  by  the  beginning  of  the  six- 
teenth century  was  conferred  upon  him  by  the  com- 
mon consent  of  all  who  loved  letters ;  the  leadership 
of  the  learned  men  of  Germany.  From  them  he 
received  an  affection  and  admiration  whose  honesty 
cannot  be  hidden  even  by  the  overloaded  compliment 
of  the  reigning  epistolary  style.  For  by  the  new 
century  the  Humanists  of  Germany  were  a  large  and 
resolute  body,  conscious  of  their  power,  known  to 
one  another,  and  needing  only  the  call  of  a  proper 
leader  to  form  a  closed  phalanx  that  would  stand 
firm  against  all  forces  of  ignorance,  tyranny,  and 
reaction. 

Meanwhile,  under  the  influences  of  a  cosmopolitan 
education,  another  northern  student  had  come  to  the 


Desiderius  Erasmus.  281 

maturity  of  his  powers,  whose  strength  as  a  scholar 
and  whose  genius  as  a  writer  were  much  greater  than 
those  of  Reuchlin.  Desiderius  Erasmus  was  born  at 
Rotterdam  eleven  years  later  than  Reuchlin,  in  1466. 
He  was  educated  at  the  school  of  Deventer,  where 
he  had  some  teaching  in  Greek  from  Alexander 
Hegius.  He  left  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  knowing 
Terence  by  heart  and  able  to  read  Horace  easily. 
The  boy  was  soon  after  left  an  orphan,  and  fell  on 
evil  days ;  for  one  of  his  guardians  lost  the  larger 
part  of  the  estate  by  careless  investment,  the  second 
died  of  the  plague,  and  the  third,  an  ignorant  and 
fanatic  schoolmaster,  was  possessed  with  the  idea  of 
forcing  Erasmus  into  a  monastery.  After  two  years 
of  struggle  he  became  an  inmate  of  the  Augustinian 
house  of  Steyn.  The  monks  were  coarse  men,  car- 
ing nothing  for  literature,  and  understanding  by  re- 
ligion the  discipline  of  their  order,  with  its  vigils  and 
fasts,  which  they  varied  by  drinking-bouts.  Eras- 
mus's delicate  constitution  could  not  endure  the  fasts, 
and  his  fastidious  spirit  shrank  from  the  drinking- 
bouts  ;  but  in  spite  of  every  repugnance,  the  poor  lad, 
with  no  friend  to  turn  to,  was  finally  persuaded  to 
become  a  monk.  He  spent  six  years  in  the  convent. 
The  example  of  the  monks  was  bad,  and  he  tells  us 
he  was  inclined  to  great  vices ;  but  he  studied  much, 
and  gained  among  all  who  knew  him  the  report  of 
a  very  accomplished  writer  of  verse  and  prose.  It 
was  this  private  reputation  which  led  the  Bishop  of 
Cambray,  then  contemplating  a  journey  to  Italy,  to 
offer  Erasmus  the  post  of  secretary.  He  accepted, 
and  was  ordained  priest  in  the  following  year.  The 


282  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Bishop  deferred  his  journey,  and  sent  Erasmus  to 
study  theology  at  Paris.  There  he  settled,  with  the 
idea  of  pursuing  his  studies  and  maintaining  himself 
as  a  private  tutor  to  young  gentlemen  of  fortune. 
It  was  thus  that  he  became  acquainted  with  Lord 
Mountjoy,  one  of  those  patrons  whose  gifts  and  pen- 
sions became  afterward  a  chief  source  of  his  income. 
After  five  or  six  years  at  Paris,  his  skill  in  Latin 
letter-writing  having  gained  him  much  reputation 
among  "the  men  who  know,"  he  went  to  Oxford 
with  introductions  to  the  head  of  St.  Mary's  College. 
In  England  he  fell  in  at  once  with  the  Grecians,  of 
whom  Colet  was  leader.  He  met  Thomas  More, 
then  just  of  age.  One  of  those  stories  which  are 
entirely  true  even  if  they  never  happened  shows  us 
at  a  glance  the  position  of  the  two  men  in  the  little 
circle  of  elec^t  spirits  in  which  each  moved.  Having 
conversed  brilliantly  for  some  time  without  knowing 
each  other's  names,  Erasmus  suddenly  cried,  "  You 
are  either  More  or  nobody,"  to  which  the  other  re- 
plied, "  And  you  are  either  Erasmus  or  the  devil." 
But  it  was  Colet  who  exercised  the  greatest  influence 
over  Erasmus  and  in  whose  society  he  took  .the 
greatest  delight.  They  had  much  pleasant  intercourse 
and  many  discussions,  scholarly  and  grave,  but  full 
of  fire.  Erasmus  has  told  how  Colet's  eye  would 
flash  and  his  quiet  countenance  appear  transfigured 
as  they  discussed  at  dinner  "  why  Cain's  offering  was 
rejected,"  or  some  similar  topic.  His  whole  tone  was 
filled  with  vehemence  as  he  finally  broke  in  on  Eras- 
mus's commonplace  praise  of  the  "  Aurea  Catena  " 
of  Aquinas  with  a  denunciation  of  one  who  had 


The  "Enchiridion"  283 

"  contaminated  the  whole  doctrine  of  Christ  with  his 
own  profane  philosophy." 

It  was  doubtless  the  friendship  of  Colet,  Platonist 
and  biblical  student,  that  fixed  Erasmus's  bent  to 
the  study  of  the  New  Testament  rather  than  to  the 
classics,  and  formed  in  him  the  determination  to 
revive  the  "  true  philosophy  of  Christ." 

When  he  had  returned  to  his  studies  at  Paris  this 
serious  inclination  of  his  mind  appeared  in  the  first 
of  his  writings,  which  carried  his  fame  outside  the 
circle  of  Humanistic  students  among  whom  his 
letters  and  his  praise  had  been  circulated :  the 
"Enchiridion,"  or  "Christian  Soldiers'  Dagger," 
printed  at  Louvain  in  1503.  It  was  written  at  the 
request  of  a  wife  to  awaken  her  husband  to  a  sense 
of  religion,  and  against  "  the  error  that  makes  re- 
ligion depend  on  ceremonies  and  a  more  than  Judaic 
observance  of  bodily  acts,  while  neglecting  true 
piety."  It  is  a  skilful  mixture  of  the  teaching  of  the 
New  Testament  and  the  Platonic  philosophy.  The 
end  of  life,  he  says,  is  Christ,  and  that  is  "  no  un- 
meaning word,  but  love,  simplicity,  patience,  purity, 
in  short,  whatever  Christ  taught."  He  then  refers 
to  the  usages  of  religion,  and  exhorts  to  an  effort  to 
find  their  spiritual  meaning.  "  If  you  worship  the 
bones  of  Paul  locked  up  in  a  casket,  worship  also  the 
spirit  of  Paul  which  shines  forth  from  his  writings." 
"For  it  is  not  charity  to  be  constant  at 'church,  to 
prostrate  yourself  before  the  images  of  the  saints, 
burn  candles,  and  chant  prayers.  What  Paul  calls 
charity  is  to  edify  your  neighbor,  to  rejoice  at  your 
brother's  welfare  and  help  his  misfortune  as  if  it 


284  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

were  your  own,  to  instruct  the  ignorant,  to  comfort 
the  cast  down,  to  do  good  in  Christ  to  all  to  whom 
you  can  do  good,  that,  as  he  gave  himself  wholly  for 
us,  so  we  also  may  serve  our  brothers'  need  and  not 
our  own."  He  then  shows  how  the  life  of  the  monks, 
"  who  have  set  themselves  apart  for  the  service  of 
religion,"  is  not  lived  in  this  happiness,  being  "  filled 
with  Jewish  superstitions  and  the  vices  of  the  world." 
"  And  when  they  are  grown  gray  in  the  observance 
of  the  rules  of  their  order  you  shall  find  that  they 
have  nothing  of  the  temper  of  Christ,  but  are  alto- 
gether unspiritual  and  unsocial,  peevish,  and  scarce 
supportable  even  to  themselves ;  cold  in  charity,  hot 
in  anger,  obstinate  in  hatred,  ready  to  fight  for  the 
most  trifling  cause,  and  so  far  from  the  perfection  of 
Christ  that  they  have  not  even  the  natural  virtues  of 
the  heathen.  Unteachable  and  sensuous,  they  turn 
with  disgust  from  the  Scriptures.  They  never  show 
kindness,  but  are  full  of  foul  suspicion  and  vain  con- 
ceit." This  attack  upon  the  errors  and  vices  of 
monasticism  did  not  in  the  least  hinder  his  intimacy 
with  the  Franciscan  monk  John  Vitrarius,  who  urged 
its  publication.  For  the  noble  man,  of  whom  Eras- 
mus has  left  a  pen-picture  done  with  the  skill  of 
affection,  had  suffered  from  these  errors  and  vices  of 
his  fellows.  Having  endeavored  to  reform  a  convent 
of  dissolute  nuns,  the  Suffragan  Bishop  of  Boulogne 
laid  a  plot  by  which  eight  of  the  worst  lured  him  into 
a  secret  place  and  would  have  strangled  him  with 
their  handkerchiefs  had  they  not  been  accidentally 
interrupted.  And  at  the  risk  of  excommunication, 
and  in  face  of  two  citations  from  his  Bishop,  he  had 


Humanism  in  the  North.  285 

denounced  the  sale  of  indulgences  and  "  the  silly 
credulity  of  those  who  thought  their  sins  would  be 
pardoned  if  they  put  their  money  in  the  box." 

When  the  "  Enchiridion  "  was  published  a  witty 
friend  wrote,  "  There  is  more  religion  in  the  book 
than  in  the  author  " ;  but  the  friendship  of  Vitrarius, 
who  knew  the  writings  of  Paul  by  heart  and  though 
"  he  preached  seven  times  a  day  never  lacked  words 
or  learning  when  his  theme  was  Christ,"  must  have 
still  further  increased  the  concentration  of  Erasmus's 
studies  upon  the  aim  of  promoting  "  the  pure  phi- 
losophy of  Christ."  The  "Enchiridion"  went 
through  many  editions  with  great  rapidity.  Twenty 
years  after  its  publication  the  Archdeacon  of  Alcor, 
in  Spain,  wrote :  "  There  is  no  other  book  of  our  time 
which  can  be  compared  to  the  '  Enchiridion '  for  the 
extent  of  its  circulation.  There  is  not  even  a  coun- 
try inn  that  has  not  a  copy  of  it  in  Spanish,  and  this 
short  work  has  made  the  name  of  Erasmus  a  house- 
hold word." 

Thus  at  the  death  of  Alexander  VI.  (1503)  a  little 
group  of  English  scholars,  represented  by  Colet,  of 
Frenchmen,  represented  by  Faber  Stapulensis,  joined 
in  spiritual  friendship  by  the  citizen  of  the  world  of 
letters,  Erasmus,  were  bending  all  the  resources  of 
the  New  Learning  to  the  study  of  the  Bible ;  while 
in  Germany  a  large  and  resolute  body  of  Humanists, 
spread  through  the  cathedral  chapters  and  universi- 
ties of  the  Empire,  were  giving  unanimous  homage 
to  John  Reuchlin  and  applauding  his  labors  to  pro- 
mote the  study  of  Greek  and  Hebrew. 


PERIOD   III. 


CHAPTER  XXL 

JULIUS  II.  AND  LEO  X. — THE  NEPHEW  OF  SIXTUS 
IV.  AND  THE  SON  OF  LORENZO  THE  MAGNIFI- 
CENT BECOME  POPES. 

ULIUS  II.,  the  lifelong  foe  and  now  the 
successor  of  Alexander  VI.,  had  the  fiery 
temper  and  stern  will  of  the  "  terrible  " 
Sixtus  IV.  But  his  ambition  was  higher 
than  his  uncle's,  for  though  he  advanced 
his  nephews  and  made  a  great  marriage  for  his  nat- 
ural daughter,  his  heart's  desire  was  not  to  enrich  his 
family,  but  to  make  the  Church  State  strong  among 
the  powers  of  Italy.  There  were  no  luxurious  nepots 
at  Rome  in  his  day.  He  avoided  even  the  appear- 
ance of  the  riotous  living  of  Alexander,  and  the  ex- 
penses of  his  household  were  only  fifteen  hundred 
florins  a  month.  The  income  of  the  Church  (a  single 
monk  brought  back  twenty-seven  thousand  florins 
from  the  sale  of  indulgences)  was  spent  in  adorning 
the  city  of  Rome  or  maintaining  his  army.  His 
treasury  was  never  allowed  to  be  empty,  and  so  good 
was  his  financial  management  that,  in  spite  of  his  great 
outlays  in  the  arts  of  peace  and  war,  he  left  his  suc- 
cessor a  treasure  of  seven  hundred  thousand  florins. 

286 


Julius  Poliorcetes.  287 

Julius  had  to  face  a  difficult  situation  for  one  who 
desired  to  make  the  patrimonium  a  strong  and  inde- 
pendent state.  France  had  seized  Milan  and  Genoa 
in  the  north,  Spain  had  conquered  the  kingdom  of 
Naples  in  the  south,  and  these  two  were  ever  threat- 
ening to  renew  their  long  and  deadly  duel  for  the 
spoils  of  Italy.  Venice,  the  only  really  strong  power 
in  the  peninsula,  sat  aside,  secure  behind  her  lagoons, 
and  anxious  only  to  draw  her  own  gain  out  of  the 
general  ruin.  He  who  would  play  in  such  a  game 
must  be  strong,  and  in  one  of  the  first  bulls  of  his 
reign  Julius  announced  that  he  felt  it  his  duty  to  re- 
gain the  lost  lands  of  the  Church.  But  he  waited 
two  years  and  a  half  before  he  moved  from  Rome, 
with  twenty-two  cardinals  and  a  long  train  of  bishops 
and  prelates,  to  occupy  the  chief  cities  of  Romagna, 
Perugia  and  Bologna.  The  host  was  carried  in  front 
of  the  Pope,  and  only  five  hundred  men-at-arms 
were  at  his  back.  The  tyrant  of  Perugia,  stained 
with  every  crime,  was  awed  by  the  cool  will  of 
Julius,  who  came  into  the  city,  leaving  his  little  army 
outside.  Instead  of  murdering  or  imprisoning  the 
Pope,  which  Machiavelli  despised  him  for  not  doing, 
he  entered  the  Papal  service  as  a  mercenary  sol- 
dier. Then,  with  a  larger  army,  to  which  eight 
thousand  French  troops  were  joined,  Julius  turned 
against  Bologna.  The  Bentivogli  fled,  and  the  Pope 
entered  in  triumphal  procession  under  an  arch  in- 
scribed "  To  Julius,  the  Expeller  of  Tyrants."  A 
still  more  splendid  triumph  awaited  him  in  Rome. 

But  crafty  Venice,  who  had  so  long  drawn  profit 
from  her  neighbors'  misfortunes,  was  now  to  suffer. 


288  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Spain  claimed  some  conquered  cities  on  the  Apulian 
coast ;  Austria  demanded  Friuli ;  France  the  return 
of  Brescia,  Cremona,  and  other  cities  of  her  Duke- 
dom of  Milan ;  the  Empire,  Verona ;  the  Florentines 
were  promised  Pisa.  Ferrara,  Mantua,  and  Urbino 
followed  the  Pope.  And  so  in  the  spring  of  1509 
the  Republic  of  San  Marco  saw  all  Italy  and  three 
fourths  of  Europe  in  arms  against  her.  It  was  Julius's 
vengeance  on  the  Venetians  for  the  four  cities  of  the 
Church  they  had  seized  and  their  resistance  to  his 
appointments  of  aliens  to  Venetian  benefices.  "  I 
tell  you,"  he  cried  one  day,  in  rage,  to  the  Republit's 
ambassador,  "  I  will  make  Venice  once  more  a  little 
fishing- village."  "  And  we,  Holy  Father,"  he  was 
answered,  "  will  make  you  once  more  a  little  priest." 
The  League  was  blessed  by  the  Pope  and  Venice 
cursed  by  the  interdict.  Two  months  laid  the  proud. 
Republic  at  his  feet  asking  for  mercy.  Then  Julius's 
heart  misgave  him.  He  could  not  destroy  the  bul- 
wark of  Italy  against  the  Turk,  the  only  state  as  yet 
unconquered  by  the  foreigner.  In  January,  1510, 
while  France  and  the  allies  still  called  for  war,  the 
ambassadors  of  the  Republic  knelt  before  the  Pope 
as  he  sat  on  the  steps  of  St.  Peter's,  in  the  presence 
of  all  Rome,  and  lightly  struck  them  with  a  rod  at 
every  verse  of  the  intoned  Miserere.  Then  they 
finished  the  penance  by  a  pilgrimage  to  the  churches 
of  the  city.  What  the  Venetian  ambassador  wrote 
home  was  plain  to  all  the  world :  "  At  'sixty-five 
years  of  age  the  Pope,  suffering  from  gout  and 
other  results  of  the  free  life  of  his  youth,  is  still  in 


A  Fighting  Pope.  289 

the  fullness  of  strength  and  activity,  and  wishes  to 
be  lord  and  master  of  the  play  of  the  world." 

Peace  with  Venice  was  followed  by  war  with 
France,  and  to  carry  it  on  Julius  made  a  Holy 
League  with  Spain  and  Venice  to  drive  the  French 
over  the  Alps,  hoping  also  for  the  aid  of  England 
and  the  Empire.  The  Bishop  of  Sitten  raised  twelve 
thousand  Swiss  to  come  down  into  the  plain  of  the 
Po  for  good  pay,  and  Julius  put  into  the  field  every 
mercenary  he  could  afford.  At  the  siege  of  Miran- 
dola  he  himself  was  seen  in  the  trenches  cheering  on 
the  soldiers.  He  took  up  his  quarters  in  the  kitchen 
of  an  old  cloister,  and  when  a  cannon-ball  killed  two 
of  his  servants  while  he  slept,  refused  to  abandon  it. 
When  the  town  surrendered  he  could  not  wait  for 
the  gates  to  open,  but  mounted  by  a  scaling-ladder 
over  the  breach. 

It  was  this  spectacle  which  caused  Hutten  to 
write  in  vitriolic  satire,  bidding  the  world  look  at 
Julius :  "  His  terrible  brow,  hiding  fierce  eyes,  with 
threats  of  hell- fire  blazing  in  his  mouth.  Behold 
him,  the  author  of  such  destruction  and  so  much 
crime,  born  a  bitter  pest  of  the  human  race,  whose 
work  and  whose  recreation  is  death.  Unlike  Christ, 
unlike  Peter,  what  does  he  do  or  what  is  there  about 
him  worthy  the  name  of  Roman  Pontiff?" 

By  the  spring  of  15 12  the  French,  in  spite  of  their 
brilliant  victory  at  Ravenna,  had  lost  every  foothold 
in  Italy  and  were  almost  overwhelmed  by  the  simul- 
taneous attacks  of  Spain,  Germany,  England,  and  the 
Netherlands.  The  Pope  had  let  slip  the  dogs  of  war 


290  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

to  some  purpose,  and  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  in  the 
pride  of  his  victory  he  should  have  wished,  as  Vasari 
says,  to  be  painted  with  a  sword  in  his  hand. 

Nor  was  Julius  the  only  Prince  of  the  Church  who 
took  the  sword.  The  Cardinal  Ippolito  of  Este  had 
his  brother's  eyes  put  out  because  his  mistress 
praised  their  beauty ;  and  when  the  Pope's  nephew, 
the  young  Duke  of  Urbino,  fell  upon  the  Papal  fa- 
vorite, Cardinal  Alidosi,  and  killed  him  with  a  dagger 
in  the  streets  of  Ravenna,  there  were  other  cardinals 
who  said,  "Well  done."  Some  of  those  who  ap- 
proved the  Papal  policy  of  "  thorough  "  gained  by  it. 
In  August,  1512,  the  Spanish  commander  appeared 
in  Florentine  territory  by  order  of  the  Holy  League. 
He  was  accompanied  by  Cardinal  Medici.  Prato 
was  stormed  and  horribly  sacked,  and  the  frightened 
Republic  of  Florence  agreed  to  receive  the  Medici 
once  more  within  her  walls.  The  government  was 
in  their  hands  within  a  year. 

France  had  not  looked  idly  on  while  all  Europe 
was  raised  against  her.  Taking  advantage  of  a 
temporary  disagreement  between  the  Emperor  and 
Julius,  she  proposed  a  Council  for  reform,  and  in  the 
spring  of  1511  a  call  was  issued  from  a  Synod  at 
Lyons  for  a  General  Council  of  the  Church,  under 
the  protection  of  the  Emperor  and  the  King  of 
France.  It  was  signed  by  three  cardinals,  and 
claimed  the  unexpressed  support  of  six  others, 
Frenchmen,  Italians,  and  Spaniards.  The  call  was 
fastened  on  the  doors  of  the  chief  cathedrals  of  Italy 
and  spread  through  Europe.  But  only  eighteen 
prelates  met  in  Pisa,  and  even  this  poor  assembly 


The  Council  of  the  Lateran.          291 

began  almost  immediately  to  dissolve,  as  its  members 
sought,  one  by  one,  to  make  their  peace  with  a  Pope 
who  was  too  strong  for  them. 

For  Julius  had  met  this  move  of  French  politicians, 
using  the  desire  for  the  revival  of  religion  to  check- 
mate a  hostile  Pope  and  keep  the  patronage  of  the 
French  national  Church  in  their  own  hands,  by  a 
skilful  counter-move.  In  the  summer  he  called  a 
General  Council  to  meet  at  the  Lateran  the  following 
spring.  On  the  2ist  of  April,  1512,  the  Council  of 
Pisa,  now  transferred  for  the  sake  of  French  protec- 
tion to  Milan,  suspended  Julius  from  the  Papacy. 
Ten  days  later  the  Pope  opened  the  Council  of 
the  Lateran  with  a  solemn  procession  closed  by  a 
company  of  men-at-arms  and  nine  cannons.  There 
were  almost  none  except  Italian  prelates  present,  but 
England,  Spain,  and  Germany  were  soon  to  declare 
their  allegiance  to  the  decrees.  The  tone  of  them 
was  given  in  the  sermons  and  orations  which  opened 
the  first  sessions. 

Egidius  of  Viterbo,  General  of  the  Augustinians, 
spoke  on  the  need  of  the  reform  of  the  Church.  He 
declared  the  defeat  of  Ravenna  a  sign  from  heaven 
to  turn  the  Church  from  the  sword  with  which  she 
had  just  suffered  defeat  to  her  own  weapons,  piety, 
prayer,  the  breastplate  of  faith  and  the  sword  of 
light.  "  Hear,"  he  cried,  "  O  thou  Head  and  De- 
fender of  the  city  of  Rome,  hear  into  what  a  deep 
sea  of  evils  the  Church  thou  hast  founded  by  thy 
blood  is  fallen !  Dost  thou  behold  how  the  earth  has 
drunk  up  this  year  more  blood  than  rain  ?  Help  us ! 
Raise  the  Church !  The  people,  men  and  women  of 


292  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

every  age — yea,  the  entire  world — are  praying  and  be- 
seeching; the  fathers,  the  Senate,  the  Pope  himself, 
beseech  you  to  preserve  the  Church,  the  city  of 
Rome,  these  temples  and  altars,  and'  to  endow  this 
Lateran  Synod  with  the  aid  of  the  Holy  Ghost  for  the 
healing  of  all  Christendom.  We  beseech  thee,  teach 
the  Christian  princes  to  make  peace  among  them- 
selves, and  to  turn  their  swords  against  Mohammed, 
the  open  enemy  of  Christ,  that  the  love  of  the  Church 
may  not  only  survive  these  storms  and  waves,  but, 
through  the  merits  of  the  Holy  Cross  and  the  power 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  may  be  cleared  of  every  stain 
and  brought  back  again  to  its  early  purity  and  glory." 

The  next  preacher  spoke  of  the  unity  of  the  Church, 
which  consisted  in  the  oneness  of  the  members  with 
each  other  and  their  subordination  to  the  head,  the 
Vicar  of  Christ ;  whence  arose  the  plain  duty  of 
the  Council  to  punish  all  schismatics  who  refused  to 
obey  this  head  of  the  whole  body. 

The  third  sermon,  by  the  General  of  the  Domini- 
cans, was  on  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  Church  and 
her  synods.  Its  conclusion  condemned  the  opposi- 
tion Council  as  from  hell — no  heavenly  Jerusalem, 
but  rather  an  earthly  Babel,  full  of  strife  and  confu- 
sion of  tongues.  The  doctrine  of  Conciliar  Supremacy 
was  denounced  as  an  innovation  no  older  than  Con- 
stance and  Basle,  and  the  preacher  exhorted  the 
Pope  to  gird  on  his  two  swords  of  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral power  and  set  himself  to  the  work  of  destroy- 
ing heresy  and  schism. 

All  these  utterances  were  emphasized  and  sum- 
marized in  the  address  of  the  Apostolic  Notary, 


Julius  the  Patron  of  Art.  293 

Marcello  of  Venice,  who  (December,  1512)  praised 
the  Pope  for  having  borne  heat  and  cold,  sleepless- 
ness, illness,  peril,  to  defeat  his  enemies  in  a  holy 
war,  to  free  Bologna,  to  conquer  Reggio,  Parma,  and 
Piacenza,  to  drive  the  Frenchmen  from  Italy.  And 
he  prophesied  that  Julius  would  gain  even  greater 
glory  in  the  works  of  peace,  the  reform  and  glorifi- 
cation of  the  Church,  now  threatened  by  foes  from 
without  and  stained  by  sin  and  treachery  within. 
"  The  Pope,"  he  concluded,  "  must  be  physician, 
helmsman,  cultivator,  in  short,  all  in  all,  like  a  sec- 
ond God  on  earth." 

In  this  spirit  the  Council  condemned  all  acts  of 
the  schismatics  at  Pisa  and  Milan,  laid  France  under 
the  interdict,  condemned  the  Conciliar  theory  of  the 
constitution  of  the  Church,  suspended  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction,  and  summoned  the  clergy  of  France  to  an- 
swer for  their  conduct  within  sixty  days.  Julius 
had  not  only  founded  by  arms  a  Papal  monarchy  in 
Italy,  but  secured  the  regular  indorsement  of  the 
Church  for  the  theory  and  practice  of  that  absolute 
Papal  Supremacy  which  the  last  two  Councils  had 
denied. 

During  the  years  when  he  was  thus  bringing  his 
plans  to  triumph  Julius  was  active  in  enlarging  and 
adorning  his  palace  and  cathedral.  He  determined 
early  in  his  pontificate  to  cover  his  rooms  with 
mural  paintings,  to  complete  the  decoration  of 
the  chapel  of  his  uncle,  to  build  a  superb  tomb  for 
himself,  and  to  rebuild  St.  Peter's  on  its  present 
gigantic  scale.  For  these  works  three  of  the  great- 
est artists  of  our  race  were  at  his  command.  Neither 


294  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Alexander,  Caesar,  nor  Napoleon  had  such  power  to 
adorn  their  achievements  as  the  Pope  to  whom  it 
was  given  to  immortalize  his  conquest  of  rebellious 
vassals  and  his  triumphant  manipulation  of  the  squab- 
bling politics  of  Italy  by  the  genius  of  Michael  An- 
gelo,  Raphael,  and  Bramante. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suspect  in  Julius  any  artistic 
ability.  The  learning  which  supplied  the  young 
Raphael  with  the  information  for  the  wonderful  pre- 
sentation of  the  ideals  of  the  Platonized  Christianity 
of  the  Florentine  Academy  in  the  pictures  of  the 
Stanza  della  Segnatura  was  certainly  not  his.  But 
there  was  a  certain  largeness  and  power  about  him 
which  encouraged  great  conceptions,  and  he  had 
been  dowered  with  that  first  quality  of  a  strong 
ruler,  the  ability  to  recognize  a  servant  of  distinction 
and  to  use  genius  without  hampering  it.  He  laid 
the  corner-stone  of  a  new  St.  Peter's,  in  spite  of  the 
opposition  of  all  his  counsellors,  and  inspired  such 
restless  energy  into  the  work  on  all  his  architectural 
plans  that  he  was  said  to  demand  of  his  contractors, 
not  to  build,  but  to  make  buildings  grow.  With 
ruthless  haste  he  destroyed  the  monuments  and 
pillars  of  the  old  Basilica  to  make  room  for  his  new 
creation,  as  if  he  felt  himself  to  be  racing  with  death, 
which  overtook  him  on  the  i6th  of  February,  1513. 

On  the  6th  of  March,  1513,  Giovanni  de'  Medici 
was  elected  Pope,  and  assumed  the  name  of  Leo  X. 
His  appearance  was  not  in  his  favor.  His  legs  were 
very  weak  and  his  body  very  heavy,  and  when  say- 
ing mass  he  was  compelled  to  constantly  wipe  the 
perspiration  from  his  hands  and  neck ;  but  he  had  a 


Leo  X.  295 

sweet  voice  and  charming  manner.  He  was  thirty- 
seven  years  old,  and  this  youngest  of  the  Popes  had 
a  precocious  ecclesiastical  career  from  the  start,  for 
he  was  an  abbot  and  an  archbishop  at  seven,  and  a 
cardinal  at  fourteen.  He  had  been  educated  under 
the  care  of  his  father,  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  in 
the  midst  of  the  best  thinkers,  writers,  and  artists  of 
Italy,  and  his  hereditary  love  of  music,  literature,  and 
art  was  guided  by  refined  tastes.  It  was  to  these 
he  had  always  turned  for  his  pleasures,  and  when  he 
said  to  his  brother,  "  The  Papacy  is  ours ;  let  us  en- 
joy it,"  he  was  thinking  of  the  measureless  opportuni- 
ties to  patronize  the  arts  which  were  now  in  his  hands. 
The  first  act  of  his  government  made  this  plain. 
So  superb  an  inaugural  procession  had  never  been 
seen.  He  spent  on  it  one  hundred  thousand  florins. 
And  all  Rome  was  adorned  to  match.  Festal  deco- 
rations in  every  street  and  house  showed  the  joy  of 
the  city  and  the  wealth  of  the  resident  prelates. 
Some  of  these  were  erected  to  honor  the  Pope,  and 
bore  figures  of  the  apostles  or  ecclesiastical  mot- 
toes; but  more  were  to  please  the  new  Maecenas, 
the  patron  of  classic  art  and  literature.  Whoever 
had  a  beautiful  bit  of  old  marble,  a  statue  of  Venus 
or  Apollo,  or  the  head  of  an  emperor,  placed  it  in 
front  of  his  palace.  Agostino  Chigi,  the  rich  Papal 
banker,  had  erected  a  huge  arch  covered  with 
mythological  devices.  It  had  this  reference  to  the 
two  preceding  Popes  (Alexander  and  Julius) :  "  Ve- 
nus held  rule  before ;  then  came  Mars ;  but  now 
Pallas  Athena  mounts  the  throne " ;  and  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street  his  neighbor  put  out  the 


296  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

statue  of  Venus  with  this  inscription :  "  Mars  fuit ; 
est  Pallas;  Venus  semper  ero."  For  the  mode  of 
Rome  was  classic,  not  to  say  heathen.  A  poet 
handed  the  Pope  an  elegy  on  the  death  of  a  friend, 
in  which  he  called  on  the  dead  "  to  beg  the  King  of 
Heaven  and  all  the  Gods  to  give  Leo  the  years 
which  the  Fates  had  cut  from  his  life."  Another 
litterateur  tells  us  how  he  made  a  funeral  mound  be- 
side the  sea  for  a  drowned  friend,  and  called  thrice 
on  his  manes  with  a  loud  voice;  and  in  a  time 
of  pestilence  a  Greek  actually  offered  a  public  sac- 
rifice in  the  Colosseum  to  appease  the  demons  of 
death. 

Leo  wanted  peace  and  the  arts,  but  war  was 
forced  upon  him.  Spain  and  France  had  already 
begun  their  long  struggle  for  the  possession  of  Italy 
and  the  leadership  of  the  world,  and  Leo  was  drawn 
into  it.  The  league  of  Spain,  England,  the  Empire, 
and  the  Pope  attacked  Venice  and  France,  and  in 
the  battle  of  Novara  (June  6,  1513)  France  was 
driven  once  more  out  of  Italy.  But  the  Pope  longed 
to  make  for  his  brother  Giuliano  a  powerful  princi- 
pality in  Central  Italy,  and  the  French  King  was  will- 
ing to  meet  him  half  way.  The  schism  begun  under 
Julius  was  healed  by  the  return  of  the  French  prelates 
to  obedience  and  the  hand  of  a  royal  princess  offered 
to  the  Pope's  brother.  But  Leo  wanted  two  strings 
to  his  bow,  and  at  the  very  hour  he  was  negotiating 
with  France  he  was  considering  a  new  secret  league 
with  Spain  and  his  old  allies ;  for  it  was  said  of  him 
that  the  only  thing  to  which  he  ever  remained  true 
was  his  own  maxim  that  "  to  have  made  a  treaty 


A  Good  Bargain.  297 

with  one  side  was  the  best  of  all  reasons  for  begin- 
ning negotiations  with  the  other." 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  these  intrigues  that  Francis 
I.,  a  beautiful  and  talented  young  prince,  full  of  ro- 
mantic dreams  of  knightly  glory,  came  to  the  French 
throne.  He  married  his  aunt  to  Giuliano  de'  Medici, 
and  the  Pope  spent  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
florins  for  presents  to  the  bride  and  her  entry  into 
Rome.  (This  was  more  than  double  the  estimated 
yearly  income  of  the  richest  merchant  banker  in 
Italy.)  But  when  the  Pope  asked  that  a  principality 
be  formed  for  his  brother  out  of  four  cities  on  the 
southern  border  of  Milan,  the  King  sharply  refused ; 
he  wanted  them  for  himself.  And  Leo  joined  the 
old  league  of  everybody  against  France.  The 
French  army  crossed  the  Alps  by  a  forced  march, 
and  in  September,  1515,  a  two  days'  fight  at  Mari- 
gnano  made  the  young  King  master  of  North  Italy. 
The  Swiss,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  Cardinal 
of  Sitten,  were  terribly  defeated  by  the  French  artil- 
lery, their  hereditary  formation  in  solid  squares  shown 
to  be  useless  in  the  new  warfare,  and  their  reputa- 
tion as  the  first  soldiers  of  Europe  destroyed.  Leo 
and  Francis  met  in  Bologna.  The  young  conqueror 
kissed  the  Pope's  foot  and  the  two  embraced.  Their 
treaty  recognized  all  Francis's  claims  to  the  Duchy 
of  Milan,  placed  the  States  of  the  Church  under  his 
protection,  and  divided  the  liberties  of  the  French 
Church,  secured  by  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  between 
the  King,  who  was  to  name  the  bishops,  and  the 
Pope,  who  was  to  draw  the  first  year's  income  of  all 
vacancies. 


298  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

After  the  battle  of  Marignano  a  solemn  peace  was 
signed  between  France,  Spain,  and  the  Empire ;  and 
the  Pope  seized  the  opportunity  to  create  his  nephew 
Lorenzo  Duke  of  Urbino,  at  the  cost  of  the  nephew 
of  Julius,  who  was  driven  into  exile.  But  the  pow- 
ers really  agreed  on  only  one  thing,  suspicion  of 
the  Pope,  who  had  deceived  each  in  turn ;  and  when 
the  exiled  Duke  of  Urbino  suddenly  reentered  his 
dominions  with  five  thousand  mercenaries,  all  stood 
by  to  watch  Leo  get  out  of  the  difficulty  as  best  he 
could.  Money  was  scarce,  and  it  was  only  by  con- 
tracting huge  debts  at  enormous  interest  that  he 
could  put  an  army  into  the  field  to  defend  his  nepot 

And  in  the  midst  of  this  struggle  internal  troubles 
came  upon  him.  A  conspiracy  to  murder  the  Pope 
was  formed  among  the  cardinals.  Its  chief  was  Pe- 
trucci,  son  of  the  famous  tyrant  of  Siena.  The  Pope 
had  permitte^  the  Cardinal's  brother  to  be  driven 
from  Siena  in  favor  of  a  cousin  who  stood  closer  to 
his  plans  and  likings.  The  young  Cardinal  kept  a 
costly  hunting  retinue  of  dogs  and  horses,  which 
was  limited  by  the  loss  of  the  family  lands.  He 
swore  vengeance  against  Leo,  and  at  first  meditated 
killing  him  on  a  hunting-party.  He  even  carried  a 
dagger  into  the  consistory,  hid  under  his  cardinal's 
robe.  But  he  finally  determined,  in  counsel  with 
Cardinal  Sauli,  to  poison  the  Pope  by  means  of  a 
physician  recommended  to  him  in  the  temporary 
absence  of  his  own.  The  plot  was  betrayed  by  the 
capture  of  letters  of  Petrucci  written  to  his  secretary, 
and  it  appeared  that  three  other  cardinals  besides 
the  active  conspirators  had  known  of  the  plot  and 


Murderous  Cardinals.  299 

kept  silence.  Riario,  Dean  of  the  College,  of  which 
he  had  been  a  member  forty  years,  was  disappointed 
over  his  defeat  by  Medici  in  the  last  election.  Ha- 
drian of  Corneto  had  been  told  by  a  fortune-teller 
that  Leo  would  die  young  and  an  old  man  of  un- 
known origin  named  Hadrian  would  succeed.  So- 
derini  was  angry  because  his  brother  Gonfalonier,  of 
the  Republic,  had  been  driven  from  Florence  by  the 
Medici.  The  plot  was  betrayed  and  Petrucci  con- 
demned to  death.  The  announcement  of  the  sen- 
tence raised  such  a  storm  of  indignation  in  the 
consistory  that  the  dispute  was  heard  in  the  streets 
outside.  Nevertheless  he  was  strangled  in  prison. 
Sauli  was  deposed.  Hadrian  fled  to  Venice  and  was 
deposed  for  contumacy.  The  other  two  were  hea- 
vily fined.  Afterward  the  Pope  said  high  mass  under 
armed  guard  to  protect  him  against  the  dagger  of  a 
cardinal. 

He  also  named  thirty-nine  new  cardinals,  and  the 
five  hundred  thousand  florins  thus  brought  in  were 
used  to  end  the  war  of  Urbino.  After  offering  in 
vain  ten  thousand  ducats  to  one  captain  for  the  sur- 
render of  the  Duke,  alive  or  dead,  Leo  finally  did 
succeed  in  bribing  all  his  generals  to  desert  him,  and 
the  Duke  was  compelled  to  give  up  the  struggle  in 
consideration  of  the  return  of  his  personal  property. 
Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  thus  settled  on  a  ducal  throne, 
was  then  married  to  a  princess  of  France,  and  in 
1517  the  Pope,  with  one  nepot  ruler  of  Florence, 
another  of  Urbino,  and  the  College  of  Cardinals  filled 
with  his  friends,  held  the  balance  of  power  in  the 
strife  of  the  young  kings  of  Spain  and  France  so 


300  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

soon  to  break  out,  first  in  rivalry  for  the  throne  of 
the  German  Empire,  and  then  in  war  for  the  posses- 
sion of  Italy. 

Meanwhile  the  Council  of  the  Lateran  had  been 
moving  in  the  matter  of  the  so  long  desired  reform 
of  the  Church.  Leo  proposed  to  establish  it  by  a 
bull,  but  the  Council  demanded  detailed  regulations 
for  bishops  and  all  clergy,  and  Pico  della  Mirandola 
sent  a  memorial  suggesting  that  the  Church  needed 
not  better  laws,  but  better  men.  The  bishops  of 
the  Council  proposed  to  effect  reform  by  reestablish- 
ing, as  against  the  privileges  of  the  cardinals  and 
monastic  orders,  the  ancient  episcopal  powers;  and 
when  a  reform  bill  was  introduced  which  failed  to 
reestablish  these  episcopal  rights,  they  threatened  to 
withdraw  from  the  Council.  The  Pope  had  to  act 
constantly  as  mediator,  and  several  compromises 
were  introduced  which  attempted  to  establish  re- 
form while  still  retaining  as  much  as  possible  of 
the  privileges  and  patronage  which  belonged  to 
each  class  of  the  clergy  represented  in  the  Council. 
The  ancient  laws  against  immorality  among  the 
clergy  were  reiterated  with  emphasis.  "  Ringing 
resolutions  "  denouncing  simony  and  abuses  in  the 
bestowal  of  benefices  were  passed  unanimously. 
Discipline  was  made  easier  by  the  removal  of  cer- 
tain exemptions  from  episcopal  control  enjoyed  by 
priests.  Bishops  were  ordered  to  supervise  clerical 
education  and  see  to  it  that  the  preaching  in  their 
dioceses  was  strong  and  true;  and  arrangements 
were  made  for  the  holding  of  regular  diocesan 
synods.  This  last  decree  would  have  been  really 


The  Triumph  of  the  Papacy.          301 

influential  for  reform,  but  unfortunately  it  remained 
almost  a  dead  letter. 

In  1516  appeared  a  book  by  Pietro  Pomponazzi, 
a  distinguished  professor  of  Bologna,  to  prove  that 
the  soul  was  mortal.  And  the  Council  thought  it 
wise,  in  view  of  the  prevailing  heathenism,  to  sol- 
emnly decree  that  human  souls  are  individual,  im- 
mortal, and  unmaterial. 

The  closing  ceremony  in  March  was  a  triumph  for 
the  Papacy.  All  the  world  was  returned  to  obedi- 
ence, and  Cardinal  Carvajal,  once  head  of  the  schis- 
matic Council  at  Pisa,  conducted  the  mass  and 
closed  a  Council  which  had  reaffirmed  the  entire 
claim  of  the  mediaeval  Popes,  condemned  the  asser- 
tion of  Conciliar  Supremacy  made  at  Constance,  and 
asserted  the  absolute  Papal  Supremacy.  They  sym- 
bolized these  decrees  by  calling  all  Christendom  to 
a  crusade  under  the  lead  of  the  Pope,  and  laid  a  tax 
for  its  expenses  on  all  lands  of  the  world. 

Already  a  Papal  messenger  had  written  to  Leo 
(1516):  "In  Germany  they  are  only  waiting  until 
some  fellow  once  opens  his  mouth  against  Rome." 
He  was  now  sent  back  as  Legate  with  a  paper  reform, 
and  the  demand  for  a  new  ecclesiastical  tax. 


PERIOD    III. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

TRANSALPINE  HUMANISM  UNDER  JULIUS  AND  LEO 
— (l)  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  BOOKS  ABOUT 
JOHN  REUCHLIN;  (2)  THE  THREE  DISCIPLES 
OF  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CHRIST;  (3)  THE 
PUPILS  OF  FABER  STAPULENSIS  J  (4)  ULRICH 

ZWINGLI. 

T  is  rather  a  suggestive  division  of  the 
history  of  German  Humanism  to  desig- 
nate its  three  periods  as  the  Theological 
(the  Forerunners,  ending  1471),  the 
Teaching  (the  Older  Humanists),  and  the 
Polemic,  which,  beginning  with  the  century,  was 
broken  in  the  middle  by  the  Protestant  revolt.  And 
it  implies  a  characteristic  distinction  between  north- 
ern and  southern  Humanism  that  across  the  Alps 
the  whole  Humanistic  body  should  have  become  so 
soon  involved  in  such  a  serious  discussion  as  the  con- 
troversy we  are  about  to  follow. 

The  forces  of  ultra-conservatism  and  reaction  were 
as  strong  in  Italy  as  in  Germany,  but  the  Humanists 
were  less  zealous  and  determined,  and  when  conflict 
arose  they  were  much  inclined  to  say,  with  Lauren- 
tius  Valla :  "  Mother  Church  does  not  know  anything 

302 


Christian  Art.  303 


about  criticism,  but  in  this  matter  I  think  just  as 
Mother  Church  does."  In  the  north  the  common 
temper  of  scholars  was  sterner  and  more  serious. 
Italian  Humanism  never  displayed  any  efficient  in- 
terest in  the  New  Testament,  and  by  the  middle  of 
the  fifteenth  century  was  the  contented  servant  of 
privileged  abuse.  But  scarcely  had  the  New  Learn- 
ing passed  the  Alps  before  we  find  its  adherents 
turning  to  biblical  studies  and  attacking  traditional 
privileges  in  the  name  of  common  justice.  While 
the  presses  of  Venice  and  Rome  were  pouring  out 
editions  of  the  classics  and  erotic  poems,  the  presses 
of  the  Rhine  were  busy  with  biblical  and  patristic 
works,  satires,  and  moral  treatises. 

This  contrast  between  the  spirit  of  Germany  and 
Italy  is  remarkable  even  in  the  sphere  of  art,  where 
it  shows  least  upon  the  surface.  Certain  general 
contrasts  between  the  works  of  Diirer  and  Holbein 
and  those  of  Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo,  all  four 
of  whom  did  their  best-known  work  in  the  first  quar- 
ter of  the  sixteenth  century,  suggest  it.  The  north- 
erners made  cheap  prints  to  go  into  the  houses  of 
the  common  people,  while  the  Italians  were  decorat- 
ing the  tombs,  the  chapels,  and  the  palaces  of  princes. 
The  Italians  were  philosophic,  moral,  and  aesthetic; 
the  Germans  religious  and  evangelic.  Michael 
Angelo  painted  the  creation  and  prophecy,  carved  a 
Moses  out  of  Homer  and  a  David  who  is  one  of 
Plutarch's  men;  but  Holbein  cut  "Thus  saith  the 
Lord  "  into  the  lines  of  the  Samuel  that  meets  Saul 
in  his  little  woodcut  for  Bible  illustration.  Raphael 
made  some  perfectly  drawn  pictures  out  of  the  life 


304  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  Christ,  that  are  as  much  like  the  four  gospels  as 
the  righting  Pope  with  his  Humanistic  cardinals,  for 
whom  he  did  them,  was  like  the  Master  and  his 
apostles ;  Diirer  put  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament 
into  his  rude  woodcuts  of  him  who  preached  the 
gospel  to  the  poor.  Raphael  painted  for  all  ages 
das  ewig  Weibliche;  Diirer  drew  for  the  people  of 
his  own  age  the  Man  of  Sorrows.  There  is  probably 
as  much  provincialism  in  Ruskin's  phrase  of  "  kicking 
prettinesses,"  applied  to  Raphael's  "Transfiguration," 
as  in  Pater's  reference  to  "  the  grim  inventions  of 
Albrecht  Diirer  "  ;  but  it  may  not  jar  upon  the  broad 
and  gentle  temper  of  history  to  suggest  that  the 
greater  rudeness  and  fidelity  to  the  New  Testament 
of  the  Germans  were  both,  perhaps,  the  outcome  of 
the  spirit  of  their  people. 

These  reflections  may  illustrate  the  deepest  reason 
why  the  whole  New  Learning  of  Germany,  applauded 
by  all  the  northern  Humanists,  became  involved  in  a 
desperate  battle  with  the  party  of  orthodoxy  over 
the  relation  of  scholarship  to  the  Bible  and  the 
Church. 

The  protagonist  was  John  Reuchlin,  and  the  oc- 
casion was  the  zeal  of  John  Pfefferkorn,  a  converted 
Jew  and  master  of  the  hospital  of  St.  Ursula  in 
Cologne.  With  the  help  of  the  Dominicans  of  Co- 
logne he  published  a  series  of  pamphlets  against  the 
Jews,  very  much  in  the  tone  and  temper  of  the  anti- 
Catholic  publications  with  which  we  are  familiar  in 
this  country.  He  followed  the  Emperor  to  Italy, 
and  as  a  result  of  his  impassioned  appeals  Reuchlin, 
as  imperial  councillor,  received  the  request  for  a 


The  Battle  is  Joined.  305 

formal  opinion  on  the  question,  "  Ought  all  the  books 
of  the  Jews  to  be  taken  away  from  them  and  burned  ?  " 
He  made  a  most  painstaking  answer,  in  which  he 
advised  the  destruction  only  of  certain  blasphemous 
parodies  of  Christianity,  two  of  which  he  cited  as 
disavowed  by  the  better  Jews.  He  defended  the 
rest  of  their  literature  as  highly  useful  to  science  and 
theology,  and  guaranteed  to  the  Jews  by  the  laws  of 
the  Empire.  This  opinion,  which  was  sent  under  seal, 
was  seen  in  transit  by  Pfefferkorn,  who  immediately 
published  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  The  Hand-glass,"  in 
which  he  caricatured  Reuchlin's  official  opinion,  at- 
tempted to  show  him  as  a  poor  scholar  and  a  worse 
Christian,  and  ended  up  by  calling  all  patrons  of 
Jewish  learning  Ohrenblaser,  Stubenstencker,  Plippen- 
plapper,  Bentelfeger,  Hinterschiitzer,  Seitenstecher. 
Reuchlin  answered  with  "  The  Eye-glass,"  a  pam- 
phlet abounding  in  similar  flowers  of  speech,  which 
bloomed  freely  over  the  whole  field  of  contemporary 
polemics.  The  original  report  of  Reuchlin  was  already 
pigeonholed  and  forgotten,  but  the  conflict  between 
the  Old  Learning  and  the  New,  so  long  impending, 
was  begun,  and  all  Germany  flamed  into  literary  war, 
amid  which  the  threats  of  the  heretic's  stake  gleamed 
darkly.  For  the  party  of  reactionary  orthodoxy, 
headed  by  the  Dominicans  and  the  theologians  of 
Cologne,  proposed  now  to  extend  to  Reuchlin  the 
policy  of  thorough  they  had  wished  for  the  Jews. 
But  the  case  was  appealed  to  Rome,  and  while  Hu- 
manistic cardinals  were  stirred  up  by  letters  to  block 
the  efforts  of  zealous  inquisitors,  the  cross-fire  of 
satires,  poems,  and  pamphlets  raged  in  Germany. 
T 


306  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

All  three  classes  of  Humanists  rallied  around  Reuch- 
lin  as  a  common  leader.  Johann  Eck  (1486-1543), 
the  young  professor  of  theology  at  Ingolstadt,  at- 
tacked a  reactionary  theologian  at  Vienna  as  a  fool 
and  a  sophist ;  for  which  we  cannot  help  feeling  there 
was  some  ground  when  we  learn  that,  as  Rector  of 
the  University,  he  forbade  a  young  professor  to  lec- 
ture because  he  had  dared  to  use  the  classic  tu 
instead  of  the  barbarous  but  customary  vos.  For  it 
was  a  cause  of  much  horror  to  the  Old  School  as 
the  Humanists  mockingly  put  it,  "  Quod  simplex 
socius  deberes  tibisare  unum  rectorem  universitatis 
qui  est  magister  noster." 

But  the  most  energetic  defender  of  Reuchlin  was 
Ulrich  von  Hutten,  a  young  representative  of  the 
pagan  Renascence.  He  was  placed  by  his  father,  a 
South  German  knight,  in  a  convent  at  Fulda  to  be 
educated,  whence  he  ran  away  at  sixteen  to  go  to 
the  Humanistic  University  of  Erfurt.  Then  for 
years  he  lived  the  wild  and  studious  life  of  a  wan- 
dering student,  subsisting  by  the  charity  of  friends 
who  admired  his  talents.  Italy,  the  loadstar  of  all 
who  loved  the  New  Learning,  drew  him  also,  and  he 
learned  in  the  South  land  not  only  a  deeper  love  of  let- 
ters, but  a  deeper  hatred  of  the  abuses  of  the  Papacy. 
Epigrams  written  at  this  time,  but  published  later, 
show  it  plainly.  For  instance,  here  is  one : 

On  the  Indtilgence  of  Julius. 

"  See  how  the  world  of  the  faithful  is  guided  by 
the  merchant  Julius,  who  sells  what  he  does  not 
possess — heaven. 


" Epistolfs  Obscurorum  Virorum"     307 

"  Offer  me  at  a  bargain  what  you  have !  How 
shameless  it  is  to  sell  what  you  are  most  in  want  of 
yourself!  If  the  giants  came  back  Jupiter  would  be 
done  for.  Julius  would  certainly  sell  them  Olympus. 
But  so  long  as  another  reigns  and  thunders  above,  I 
shall  never  take  the  trouble  to  bid  for  property  in 
heaven." 

Hutten  came  back  from  his  travels  a  bold  and 
fluent  satirist,  German  to  the  core,  and  plunged  with 
fresh  zeal  into  the  ranks  of  the  Reuchlinists. 

They  were  already  a  marshaled  army  with  pub- 
lished lists  of  names.  One  of  their  most  distin- 
guished muster-rolls  was  found  in  the  volume  printed 
at  Tubingen,  1514,  entitled  "  Clarorum  Virorum 
Epistolae,  Latinae,  Graecae  et  Hebriacae  variis  tem- 
poribus  missae  ad  Joannem  Reuchlin."  It  was  with 
the  aid  of  Hutten  that  a  little  company  of  the  Erfurt 
Humanists  published  anonymously  a  parody  entitled 
"  Epistolae  obscurorum  virorum  ad  venerabilem  virum 
M.  Ortuinum  Gratium  variis  et  locis  et  temporibus 
missae  et  demum  in  volumen  coactae."  It  is  a  work 
so  characteristic  of  its  age  that,  by  the  confession  of 
its  best  commentators,  translation  is  impossible  and 
paraphrase  difficult.  Its  humor,  whose  tone  has  been 
well  compared  to  that  of "  Don  Quixote,"  is  stained  by 
the  filthy  jesting,  its  hatred  of  ignorant  intolerance 
by  the  reckless  slander  universal  among  scholars  of 
the  day,  and  it  is  written  in  a  wild  but  most  clever 
caricature  of  the  dog- Latin  of  the  monks. 

The  letters  and  poems  in  it  were  supposed  to  be  ad- 
dressed to  Ortuin  Gratius,  of  the  theological  faculty 


308  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  Cologne,  by  a  series  of  friends  who  bore  such 
names  as  Eitelnarrabianus,  Kukuk,  Buntemantellus, 
Dollenkopfius,  Schaffmulius.  They  propounded 
learned  questions  for  discussion,  or  reported  journeys 
to  other  universities.  Through  them  all  runs  a  thread 
of  allusion  to  Reuchlin  and  the  advance  of  the  New 
Learning.  They  suggest  absurd  arguments  for  his 
discomfiture,  or  they  tell  of  how  his  friends  at  other 
universities  turned  the  narrator  out  of  the  inn  as  an 
enemy  of  the  Muses.  One  reports  that  the  chief 
preacher  in  Wiirzburg  is  a  dangerous  man  who  an- 
nounces that  he  belongs  to  no  school  except  the 
school  of  Christ;  that  he  preaches  plainly,  without 
the  tricks  of  rhetoric  and  logic,  and  the  people  like  it. 
He  even  dared  to  say,  when  Brother  Jacob  announced 
the  sale  of  indulgences,  that  if  a  man  bought  a  hun- 
dred indulgences,  and  did  not  live  well,  he  will  be 
damned,  and  the  indulgence  will  not  help  him  in  the 
least.  Another  reports  a  disputation  over  a  passage 
of  prophecy  in  which  his  adversary  asserted  that  the 
light  of  truth  was  about  to  be  cast  upon  the  dirty, 
dark,  and  senseless  theology  which  had  been  brought 
into  vogue  a  few  hundred  years  before  by  men  igno- 
rant of  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew.  God  was  sending 
new  doctors  with  lights,  like  Reuchlin  and  Erasmus, 
who  had  just  put  out  a  true  edition  of  Jerome,  a  real 
theologian;  and  he  was  working  at  the  text  of  the 
New  Testament,  which  was  worth  more  than  to  have 
twenty  thousand  Scotists  and  Thomists  disputing  for 
a  hundred  years  over  ens  and  essentia. 

A  single  one  of  these  letters  will  serve  as  a  favor- 
able specimen.     It  is  from  Thomas  Langschneider  to 


A  Specimen  Letter.  .  309 

his  old  master  Gratius,  asking  an  opinion  upon  a 
learned  question.  With  many  quotations  from  Aris- 
totle and  the  Bible,  he  describes  a  feast  at  Leipzig, 
given,  according  to  custom,  by  one  who  had  just 
become  master  in  theology;  and  after  they  had 
enjoyed  the  roast  capons,  fish,  Malvoisie  and  Rhine 
wine,  Eimbecker,  Torgauer,  and  Neuburger  beer, 
they  began  to  discuss  learned  themes.  And  finally 
Magister  Warmsemmel,  a  reputable  Scotist,  and 
Magister  Delitzsch,  a  doctor  of  medicine  and  law, 
became  involved  in  an  insoluble  dispute  as  to  whether 
one  who  was  about  to  become  a  doctor  of  theology 
{Magister  Noster)  should  be  called  Magister  Nos- 
trandus  or  Noster  Magistrandus.  Warmsemmel 
points  out  that  magistrare  is  a  verb,  but  nostro, 
nostrare,  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  dictionary.  To 
which  his  antagonist  replied  that  in  Horace's  "  Ars 
Poetica  "  the  right  to  make  new  words  was  clearly 
established.  The  correspondent  asks  Gratius  to  de- 
cide which  was  right,  and,  in  closing,  inquires  how 
the  war  comes  on  with  that  scoundrel  Reuchlin,  who, 
he  understands,  obstinately  refuses  to  recant.  This 
mildest  of  all  the  letters  seems  like  fairly  strong  sar- 
casm, but  it  needed  coarse  point  to  touch  its  victims, 
for  a  Dominican  prior  in  the  Low  Countries  was  so 
pleased  with  this  new  defence  of  the  labors  of  his 
order  on  behalf  of  orthodoxy  that  he  ordered  a  large 
number  of  copies  to  be  sent  to  friends  in  high  rank. 
History  does  not  record  what  he  said  when  he  dis- 
covered his  mistake  on  reading  the  last  letter  of  the 
second  part,  which  even  the  most  Boeotian  wits  could 
not  misunderstand. 


3 1  o  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

The  learned  farce  was  received  with  Homeric 
laughter.  We  can  well  imagine  that,  even  in  Co- 
logne, the  student  body  was  delighted  with  it,  and 
if  anything  was  needed  to  bring  youngest  Germany 
to  the  side  of  the  New  Learning,  the  "  Epistolae  Ob- 
scurorum  Virorum  "  did  it.  But  as  subsequent  edi- 
tions became  diffused  and  coarsened  the  judicious 
grieved.  Reuchlin  thought  it  vulgar,  and  tradition 
says  he  remonstrated  sharply.  A  young  professor 
of  theology  at  Wittenberg,  Martin  Luther,  though 
counted  among  the  Reuchlinists,  said  it  was  imperti- 
nent, and  called  the  author  "  Hans  Sausage."  Eras- 
mus, though  he  liked  it  at  first,  finally  spoke  of  it 
with  asperity  as  an  injury  to  the  Humanistic  cause. 

For  Erasmus  was  working  on  altogether  different 
lines.  Colet  and  his  two  younger  friends,  More  and 
Erasmus,  were  united  in  a  more  or  less  unconscious 
cooperation  at  a  common  work — reform  by  the  dem- 
onstration of  a  reasonable  Christianity ;  the  philos- 
ophy of  Christ  applied  to  the  problems  of  the  world. 

With  Colet  this  desire  took  a  more  personal  and 
religious  form,  and  as  time  went  on  the  thoughts  of 
the  Dean  of  St.  Paul  became  more  and  more  centred 
on  Christ.  He  had  arranged  Christ's  sayings  into 
groups  to  remember  them  better  and  planned  a  book 
upon  them.  His  preaching,  the  most  influential  in 
England,  dwelt  more  and  more  on  the  blessings  and 
example  of  Christ.  He  loved  children,  quoting  the 
example  of  our  Lord,  and  bent  his  learning  to  write 
a  little  Latin  grammar  for  them,  that  they  might 
"  grow  to  perfect  literature  and  come  at  last  to  be 
great  clerks."  He  gave  his  whole  private  fortune 


Thomas  More.  311 


to  found  St.  Paul's  School  for  the  free  education  of 
one  hundred  and  fifty-three  boys,  with  the  "  intent 
by  this  school  specially  to  increase  knowledge  and 
worshipping  of  God  and  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and 
good  Christian  life  and  manners  in  the  children." 

With  Thomas  More,  greatest  advocate,  and  finally 
Lord  Chancellor  of  England,  the  desire  to  propagate 
the  philosophy  of  Christ  expressed  itself  naturally  in 
the  direction  of  social  and  political  reforms.  His 
"  Utopia "  was  a  description  of  an  ideal  common- 
wealth, described  by  an  old  traveler  he  met  in  Ant- 
werp through  the  introduction  of  Peter  Giles,  a  well- 
known  merchant  of  that  city.  It  ridicules  the  passion 
for  war  then  ruling  the  hearts  of  all  Christian  princes ; 
skilfully  denounces  by  comparison  the  crying  injus- 
tices done  to  the  laboring  classes  by  society  and  the 
laws  which  "  confer  benefits  on  the  gentry  and  care 
to  do  nothing  at  all  for  peasants,  colliers,  servants, 
wagoners,  and  mechanics,  without  whom  no  state 
could  exist."  He  points  out  that  in  England  only 
four  people  in  ten  could  read,  and  proposes  as  a 
better  ideal,  not  an  ignorant  nation  divided  into 
jealous  classes  of  rich  and  poor,  but  a  true  commu- 
nity, comfortable  and  educated  throughout.  He 
suggests  as  one  means  of  accomplishing  this  to  so 
repress  idleness,  restrict  luxury,  and  manage  work 
that  the  hours  of  labor  should  be  confined  to  six  a 
day  for  each  male.  He  proposed  sanitary  reform  to 
stop  the  plagues,  and  hints  at  other  improvements 
which  have  become  matters  of  course  to  us  of  these 
latter  days.  Through  all  the  work  he  shows  the  firm 
faith  that  the  teachings  of  Christ  and  the  guidance 


312  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

of  reason  are  workable,  fitted,  if  men  would  only  live 
by  them,  to  establish  a  Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth. 

With  Erasmus  this  desire  to  propagate  the  philos- 
ophy of  Christ  turned  in  the  direction  of  scholarship. 
Not,  indeed,  that  the  acute  writer,  who  had  learned 
from  books  and  letters  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
world,  neglected  the  idea  of  political  reform.  His 
"  Praise  of  Folly,"  which  ran  through  seven  editions 
in  a  few  months,  was  a  classic  treatment  of  the  theme 
handled  by  Brant  in  the  chaotic  "  Ship  of  Fools  " ; 
and  his  "  Christian  Prince,"  written  for  the  young 
Charles,  afterward  Emperor  of  Germany,  is,  as  has 
been  well  suggested,  the  opposite  to  "  The  Prince  " 
of  Machiavelli,  then  lying  in  manuscript.  He  bids 
the  Prince  secure  "  the  favor  of  God  by  making  him- 
self useful  to  the  people,  for  the  duties  between  a 
prince  and  his  people  are  neutral."  But  these  were 
simply  the  pastimes  of  a  hard  worker.  The  labor  of 
his  life  was  the  New  Testament  in  Greek ;  not  the  first 
Greek  Testament  finished  by  the  New  Learning, — 
for  the  Complutensian  polyglot  was  ready  a  few 
months  earlier, — but  the  first  to  be  put  in  circulation. 

His  preface  to  the  great  work  makes  clear  his  hope 
to  oppose  two  evils :  first,  the  pagan  tendency  of  the 
age,  which,  while  straining  the  human  mind  to  master 
all  subtleties  and  toiling  to  overcome  all  difficulties, 
neglects,  derides,  and  treats  with  coldness  the  philos- 
ophy of  Christ;  second,  the  tendency  of  the  Old 
Learning  to  substitute  the  schoolmen  for  the  gospels. 
"  What  are  Albertus,  Alexander,  Thomas,  ^Egidius, 
Ricardus,  Occam,  compared  to  Christ  or  Peter  or 


The  Fears  of  the  Orthodox.  313 

Paul  or  John  ?  If  the  footprints  of  Christ  be  anywhere 
shown  to  us,  we  kneel  down  and  adore.  Why  do  we 
not  rather  venerate  the  living  and  breathing  picture 
of  him  in  these  books  ?  If  the  vesture  of  Christ  be 
exhibited,  where  will  we  not  go  to  kiss  it  ?  Yet  his 
whole  wardrobe  could  not  represent  him  more  vividly 
than  these  writings.  We  decorate  statues  with  gold 
and  gems  for  the  love  of  Christ.  These  books  present 
us  with  a  living  image  of  his  holy  mind." 

The  publication  of  this  New  Testament,  which  was 
also  a  sort  of  commentary,  had  been  much  opposed 
by  the  party  of  orthodoxy,  and  the  grounds  of  oppo- 
sition are  clearly  expressed  in  a  letter  of  Martin  Dor- 
pius,  of  the  University  of  Louvain,  which  beseeches 
Erasmus,  "  by  our  mutual  friendship  and  your  wonted 
courtesy,  to  desist  from  this  attempt  to  supplement 
the  Latin  New  Testament  with  a  Greek  version  which 
amends  the  Vulgate."  Dorpius  asserts  the  folly  of 
such  an  attempt  to  correct  a  version  which  has  in 
it  no  errors  or  mistakes.  "  For  this  is  the  version 
used  and  still  used  by  the  unanimous  Universal  Church, 
and  it  cannot  be  that  she  is  mistaken."  "  How  could 
it  be  possible  that  the  heretic  Greeks  could  have  pre- 
served a  truer  text  than  the  orthodox  Latins?  "  "  Be- 
sides," he  continues,  "  there  is  great  harm  in  your 
attempt.  If  you  discuss  the  integrity  of  the  Scrip- 
tures many  will  doubt;  for,  as  Augustine  said  to 
Jerome,  '  If  any  error  should  be  admitted  to  have 
crept  into  the  Holy  Scriptures,  what  authority  would 
be  left  to  them  ? '  Therefore,  I  beseech  you,  limit 
your  corrections  to  those  passages  of  the  New  Testa' 


3 1 4  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

ment  in  which  you  can  substitute  better  words  with- 
out altering  the  sense."1 

In  spite  of  these  alarmed  remonstrances  the  book 
appeared  with  a  dedication,  by  permission,  to  the 
Pope,  and  was  received  with  acclaim.  Letters  came 
to  Erasmus  from  all  sides ;  among  them  a  poem  from 
Philip  Melancthon,  a  young  student  of  Tubingen,  who 
was  already  known  among  his  fellows  as  "  the  second 
Erasmus." 

To  this  chorus  of  praise  there  was  strong  dissent. 
The  reactionary  orthodox  party  of  course  objected 
bitterly,  and  Erasmus's  enemies  were  loud  against 
him.  Edward  Lee,  an  Englishman,  attacked  him  for 
many  errors,  among  them  the  omission  of  the  text 
on  "  the  three  that  bear  witness  in  heaven  " — which 
must,  Lee  said,  result  in  a  revival  of  Arianism  and 
schism  in  the  Church. 

And  there  were  other  objections  in  a  more  kindly 
spirit.  Martin  Luther,  a  young  professor  of  theology 
at  Wittenberg,  wrote  to  his  friend  Spalatin  how  much 
he  regretted  the  "evident  preference  of  Erasmus  for 
following  Jerome  in  seeking  the  historical  (he  calls  it 
the  dead)  sense  of  Scripture  rather  than  the  spiritual 
method  of  Augustine.  "  The  more  I  study  the  book, 
the  more  I  lose  my  liking  for  it.  Erasmus,  with  all 
his  learning,  is  lacking  in  Christian  wisdom.  The 
judgment  of  a  man  who  attributes  anything  to  the 
human  will  is  one  thing,  but  the  judgment  of  one 
who  recognizes  anything  but  grace  is  another." 

1  In  1512  Faber  Stapulensis  had  felt  obliged  to  defend  himself,  in 
the  preface  to  his  commentary  on  Paul's  Epistles,  against  the  charge 
of  temerity  because  he  had  dared  in  comments  to  add  to  the  text  of  the 
Vulgate  the  sense  of  the  Greek. 


Criticisms.  3 1 5 

"  Nevertheless,"  he  continues,  "  I  carefully  keep  the 
opinion  to  myself,  lest  I  should  play  jnto  the  hands 
of  his  enemies." 

Dr.  Eck,  the  young  professor  of  theology  at  In- 
golstadt  and  a  correspondent  of  Luther,  wrote  also 
to  their  common  friend  Spalatin  his  objections  to  the 
Novum  Instrumentum.  They  applied  not  so  much 
to  its  theology  as  to  its  critical  method.  Erasmus 
had  pointed  out  that  the  apostles,  quoting  from  mem- 
ory, were  not  always  exact  in  citing  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. He  had  also  said  that  their  Greek  was  not 
classic.  Eck  objects  to  the  first  remark  on  the 
Augustinian  ground  that  to  admit  error  destroys 
authority,  and  to  the  second  because  it  attributes 
negligence  or  ignorance  to  the  Holy  Spirit.  In  con- 
clusion he  hopes  that  Erasmus  would  read  Augustine 
more  and  Jerome  less.  Spalatin  sent  this  letter  to 
Erasmus,  who  replied  in  a  friendly  tone  to  the  friendly 
remonstrance.  He  was  publishing  a  splendid  new 
edition  of  Jerome  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that 
the  methods  and  results  of  his  interpretation  were 
not  novelties,  but  had  the  authority  of  the  father 
who  gave  the  Church  the  Vulgate.  Of  course  he 
could  not  surrender  his  deliberate  preference,  but  he 
hoped  that,  as  Jerome  and  Augustine  had  differed 
without  ceasing  to  be  friends,  he  and  Dr.  Eck  might 
imitate  their  holy  example. 

Faber  Stapulensis,  who,  when  Erasmus  settled  at 
Basle  in  1513,  had  written  him  a  letter,  brief  but  full 
of  congratulations,  praying  that  his  life  might  be 
prolonged  to  enlighten  the  world  with  his  labors, 
accused  Erasmus  of  folly,  ignorance,  and  vanity  be  • 


3 1 6  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

cause  he  had  suggested  that  doubts  had  been  enter- 
tained as  to  tjie  Pauline  authority  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews.  Erasmus  had  criticised  points  in 
Faber's  commentary  on  the  Pauline  Epistles,  pub- 
lished in  1512,  and  the  bitterness  of  this  tone  was 
doubtless  due  to  the  touchy  vanity  which  is  always 
the  weakness  of  scholars,  and  which  the  most  distin- 
guished men  of  the  sixteenth  century  had  no  shame 
in  displaying.  Erasmus  himself  too  often  whines  like 
a  spoiled  child  over  the  injustice  of  fate  or  the  lack  of 
appreciation  of  a  world  which  flattered  him  inces- 
santly. 

Faber  was  by  this  time  a  great  figure  among  men 
of  letters.  In  1513  Reuchlin  had  written  to  him  as 
the  "  restorer  of  Aristotle,  the  glory  of  whose  works 
is  everywhere,"  begging  that  he  would  present  to 
the  Sorbonne  his  defence  against  the  charge  of  heresy 
brought  by  the  theologians  of  Cologne.  He  had 
been  gathering  around  him  in  Paris  a  little  knot  of 
scholars,  chief  among  whom  was  Guillaume  Farel,  born 
of  a  noble  family  of  Dauphine  in  1489.  Faber  led 
these  in  pious  exercises,  frequently  going  with  Farel  to 
pray  in  the  churches  and  make  offerings  of  flowers 
at  the  shrines  of  the  saints.  His  best  lectures  were 
upon  the  Psalms  and  the  Epistles  of  Paul,  on  which 
he  published  a  commentary,  in  1502,  which  empha- 
sizes the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith.  Though 
his  devotion  to  the  Church  and  his  hatred  of  schism 
remained  unbroken,  there  grew  upon  Faber  a  con- 
viction of  the  evilness  of  the  times  and  a  hope  of 
better  things.  He  seems  to  have  shared  the  convic- 
tion of  his  correspondent,  Erasmus,  that  reason  and 


Ulrich  Zwingli.  317 

the  Word  of  God  would  dispel  the  reigning  darkness ; 
for  Farel  has  told  us  how  earnestly  he  used  to  say, 
"  William,  the  world  is  to  be  renewed,  and  you  will 
see  it."  Among  his  favorite  scholars  was  the  son  of 
Brifonnet,  a  great  officer  of  state  who,  on  the  death 
of  his  wife,  took  orders  and  became  a  cardinal. 
Guillaume  Briconnet  became  bishop  and  abbot  while 
still  young,  and  made  his  abbey  a  seat  of  letters  de- 
voted to  religion.  It  was  there  that  Faber  finished, 
in  1509,  his  commentary  on  the  Psalms. 

Bound  to  this  circle  of  French  Humanists  and  to 
Erasmus  and  his  friends  at  Basle  by  a  lively  corre- 
spondence was  a  Swiss  who  at  an  early  age  began  to 
win  distinction  in  letters.  Ulrich  Zwingli  had  been 
born  in  1484  in  the  Alpine  village  of  Toggenburg, 
of  which  his  father  was  chief  magistrate.  His  uncle, 
dean  of  the  cathedral  of  a  small  city  near  by,  took 
the  boy  into  his  house  and  directed  his  education  at 
the  newly  opened  school.  At  the  University  of 
Vienna  he  fell  under  the  power  of  the  New  Learning, 
and  at  the  age  of  twenty-three  was  called  to  be  pastor 
of  the  city  of  Glarus.  He  displayed  power  as  a 
preacher,  and  strove  to  use  in  that  exercise  of  his 
office  all  his  knowledge,  even  learning  the  history  of 
Valerius  Maximus  by  heart  to  furnish  historical  illus- 
trations. He  soon  became  possessed  of  the  best 
library  in  the  vicinity,  and  as  learning1  was  scarce, 
the  fame  of  his  scholarship  spread.  He  also  made 
himself  much  beloved  by  the  charm  of  his  personality, 
which  was  heightened  by  skill  in  music  ;  and  a  young 
friend,  inviting  him  to  his  magister  banquet  at  Basle, 
playfully  addressed  him  as  "  the  Apollonian  lute- 


3 1 8  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

player  and  recognized  Cicero  of  our  age  " — a  jest 
only  in  form,  for  he  was  already  hailed  as  "the  first 
to  acclimatize  Humanistic  studies  in  Switzerland," 
and  Erasmus  wrote  to  him  as  one  "  who,  with  his 
friends,  would  raise  the  Fatherland  to  a  higher  grade 
of  education  and  morals."  These  great  labors  and 
pleasures  were  broken  by  sterner  duties  when  Zwingli 
marched  as  chaplain  with  the  city  company  to  sup- 
port the  banner  of  the  Pope  at  Novara  (1513)  and 
Marignano  (1515).  It  was  just  before  the  last  battle 
that  his  powerful  sermon  in  the  market-place  of 
Monza  hindered  the  main  body  of  the  confederates 
from  accepting  the  bribes  of  France  and  deserting 
the  League  on  the  eve  of  battle. 

Amid  all  these  labors  there  had  been  growing  in 
him  an  ever-increasing  devotion  to  the  study  of  the 
New  Testament.  The  writings  of  two  men  were 
especially  influential  in  directing  his  thoughts  in  this 
direction.  He  had  the  works  of  Pico  della  Mirandola 
in  the  edition  published  by  Wimpheling  at  Strass- 
burg  in  1504.  Even  as  a  student  at  Basle,  Zwingli 
had  gotten  into  trouble  by  confessing  his  agreement 
with  some  of  the  condemned  theses  of  Pico,  and  now, 
as  a  man,  he  busied  himself  much  with  his  writings. 
The  works  of  Erasmus  were  all  in  his  hands  as  fast 
as  they  appeared ;  the  "  Enchiridion,"  the  "  Praise  of 
Folly,"  the  "Adages,"  and  all  the  tractates,  were  his 
familiar  companions ;  and  when  he  visited  Erasmus 
in  Basle  in  1515  he  could  greet  him  as  an  old  friend 
and  master.  Zwingli  said  afterward  that  Erasmus  first 
made  him  aware  of  the  evils  which  had  gathered 
around  the  worship  of  saints  and  relics,  and  pointed 


Stra  ightforwa  rd  Preach  ing.  3 1 9 

out  the  absence  of  all  allusion  to  such  practices  in  the 
Bible.  It  was  from  these  suggestions  that  Zwingli 
became  sure,  about  the  year  1515,  that  "Christ  is 
the  only  Saviour,  comfort,  and  treasure  of  our  poor 
souls." 

Soon  after,  his  outspoken  condemnation  of  the 
French  alliance,  which,  in  his  judgment,  put  the  free 
confederacy  in  the  hands  of  the  French  King,  so 
offended  some  of  the  magistrates  of  Glarus,  whom  he 
denounced  as  takers  of  bribes,  that  he  accepted  a  call 
to  be  preacher  at  the  abbey  of  Einsiedeln.  Since 
the  fifteenth  century  the  wonder-working  statue  of 
Einsiedeln  had  made  it  the  centre  of  annual  pilgrim- 
ages from  all  South  Germany.  The  riches  thus 
brought  to  the  cloister  coffers  had  wrought  great  in- 
roads in  the  simple  life  of  the  monks.  ^But  the 
officials  by  whom  Zwingli  was  called  had  repressed 
open  scandals,  and  the  abbot,  while  taking  little 
personal  interest  in  /eligion,  was  glad  to  have  good 
sermons,  and  pleased  that  the  abbey  should  become, 
under  Zwingli  and  his  friends,  a  centre  of  Humanism 
in  Switzerland.  It  was  very  straight  preaching  the 
pilgrims  heard  from  the  new  incumbent ;  not  polemic, 
but  the  proclamation  of  positive  truths  whose  accep- 
tance would  have  closed  the  shrines  and  stopped  the 
pilgrimages.  The  administrator  of  the  cloister  was 
in  entire  sympathy  with  the  straightforward  preach- 
ing, and  also  joined  Zwingli  in  his  literary  studies, 
for  which  he  made  large  purchases  of  books  from 
Paris,  Basle,  and  the  other  German  presses.  An 
extensive  correspondence  united  the  little  circle  of 
learned  men  with  the  literati  of  Basle,  at  whose  head 


320  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

was  Erasmus,  and  the  circle  of  Faber  Stapulensis, 
whose  comment  on  the  Psalms  was  one  of  Zwingli's 
favorite  working  books.  But  when  the  New  Testa- 
ment of  Erasmus  appeared  Zwingli  turned  to  it,  and 
we  are  told  by  one  of  his  friends  that  he  learned  the 
Greek  text  of  Paul's  Epistles  by  heart. 

He  was  able  to  be  quite  a  buyer  of  books,  because 
since  his  sermon  at  Monza  he  received  from  the  Pope 
a  yearly  present  of  fifty  florins,  which  he  used,  per- 
haps by  Leo's  wish,  for  the  increase  of  his  library. 


PERIOD   III. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THE  COURT  OF  LEO  X. — HUMANISM  IN  ITALY  AND 
SPAIN — THE  THREE  BOY  KINGS. 

OR  Leo  shared  his  good  fortune  with 
generous  hand.  His  life  was  mirthful 
and  splendid.  He  ate  little  himself,  fast- 
ing three  times  in  the  week,  but  he  enter- 
tained royally,  and  his  table  cost  him 
ninety-six  thousand  florins,  or  more  than  half  the 
yearly  income  of  the  estates  of  the  Church  and  seven 
times  the  total  yearly  salary  of  all  the  professors  of 
the  University  of  Rome.  But  he  gave  no  banquet 
as  splendid  as  that  to  which  he  was  invited  by  his 
banker,  Chigi,  in  honor  of  the  christening  of  an  il- 
legitimate daughter.  At  the  end  of  every  course  of 
the  feast  the  gold  and  silver  plate  was  thrown  out  of 
the  windows  into  the  river — to  be  caught  by  nets 
hidden  beneath  the  water. 

These  Papal  banquets  were  adorned  by  poetry. 
The  recital  of  extempore  verses  was  a  common 
amusement  of  Leo,  and  he  often  joined  in  the  con- 
tests himself.  A  perfect  swarm  of  poets  lived  on 
him,  and,  like  Nicholas,  he  gave  even  to  the  bad  ones. 
With  the  latter  he  was  not  above  a  practical  joke ; 
u  321 


322  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

for  a  certain  Baraballo,  who  recited  atrocious  verses 
to  his  own  unbounded  delight,  was  crowned  poet  and 
led  in  mock  triumph  through  the  city  mounted  on 
an  elephant,  the  gift  of  the  Portuguese  King,  whose 
navigators  had  brought  it  round  the  Cape  from  India. 
Leo  would  not  allow  the  train  to  approach  the  Vat- 
ican, but  his  zest  in  the  colossal  joke,  in  which  the 
whole  court  joined,  is  marked  by  the  figure  of  the 
elephant  on  the  door  between  two  of  the  rooms  dec- 
orated by  Raphael. 

The  Pope's  favorite  amusement  was  music.  He 
sang  well  himself,  and  often  joined  in  the  concerts, 
to  which  he  listened  as  in  a  dream  of  delight.  It 
was  at  such  times  that  he  was  most  unbounded  in  his 
gifts.  He  took  great  pleasure  also  in  acting,  and  his 
friends  and  household  presented  comedies  before  him, 
for  which  Raphael  sometimes  painted  scenes  and 
arranged  decorations.  These  were  frequently  of  a 
free  tone,  and  the  Pope's  presence  at  them  often  gave 
offence  to  the  ambassadors  and  other  visitors.  Leo 
applauded  and  rewarded  successful  authors  and 
actors,  but  he  had  a  monk  whose  piece  was  a  failure 
severely  tossed  in  a  blanket  before  him.  He  was 
very  fond  of  cards  also,  and  his  losses  and  the  pres- 
ents he  made  amounted  to  sixty  thousand  florins  a 
year — more  than  twelve  times  the  amount  Raphael 
was  paid  for  his  work  in  the  four  great  frescoed  rooms 
of  the  Vatican,  and  ten  times  what  Michael  Angelo 
had  received  for  painting  the  Sistine  Chapel. 

Of  course  no  finances  could  stand  such  a  strain  as 
this.  Leo  had  a  regular  income  of  between  four  and 
five  thousand  florins.  In  addition  he  sold  between 


The  Augustan  Age  of  the  Papacy.     323 

twenty-five  and  twenty-six  hundred  offices,  which 
brought  during  eight  years  and  a  half  a  total  of  nearly 
three  million  florins.  But  he  left  debts  amounting 
to  nearly  twelve  hundred  thousand  ducats.  Under 
his  successor  the  ordinary  expenses  of  the  Roman 
State  were  reckoned  at  three  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  florins,  so  that  in  eight  years  and  a  half  the 
Pope  spent  on  the  conquest  of  Urbino,  and  other 
personal  and  family  expenses,  about  four  million 
florins,  or  an  average  of  seven  times  the  income  of 
Agostino  Chigi,  who,  with  seventy  thousand  florins 
a  year,  was  reckoned  the  richest  merchant  banker  of 
Italy. 

For  part  of  this  huge  shower  of  gold  scattered 
with  liberal  hand  Leo  received  an  extraordinary 
return.  The  age  of  Augustus  is  not  rendered  more 
illustrious  by  the  writings  of  the  men  he  patronized 
than  the  age  of  Leo  by  the  works  of  the  masters  of 
the  arts  of  design  whom  he  employed;  and  in  the 
popular  mind  he  is  remembered,  not  as  the  Pope 
under  whom  Switzerland  and  Germany  broke  away 
from  the  Papacy,  but  as  the  Pope  for  whom  Bramante, 
Michael  Angelo,  and  Raphael  worked.  Neither  the 
glory  nor  the  blame  can  be  laid  at  his  door.  He 
found  the  immortal  three  in  Rome  when  he  ascended 
the  throne,  and  he  only  continued  to  employ  them 
on  the  designs  of  Julius  II. ;  and  the  revolt  of  Ger- 
many and  Switzerland  was  the  outcome  of  European 
movements  working  in  England,  France,  and  Ger- 
many, which  we  have  seen  beginning  years  before. 

Another  glory  of  the  court  of  Leo,  which,  unlike 
the  undimmed  pictures  of  Raphael,  has  now  faded, 


324  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

was  the  fame  of  the  litterateurs  and  scholars  who 
surrounded  him.  Rome  usurped,  under  his  rule,  that 
unquestioned  literary  supremacy  which  she  had  for 
some  years  shared  with  Florence.  His  generous 
patronage  made  the  Eternal  City  a  veritable  paradise 
of  the  Humanists.  Next  to  a  well-filled  purse  a 
skilled  pen  was  the  best  recommendation  to  ecclesi- 
astical preferment.  The  chief  novelists  and  historians 
of  Rome  were  bishops  or  at  least  apostolic  secretaries, 
and  among  the  cardinals  and  their  friends  were  many 
men  distinguished  for  literature. 

These  Roman  lovers  of  letters  and  the  arts  fall 
naturally  into  the  three  classes  we  have  noted  before 
among  the  Humanists. 

It  is  difficult  to  label  the  most  distinguished  stylist 
of  his  day — Pietro  Bembo,  Leo's  secretary,  and 
twenty-five  years  later  cardinal  under  Paul  III. — as 
anything  but  a  pagan.  His  learning  was  never  turned 
in  the  direction  of  the  fathers  or  the  Bible,  nor  were 
his  philosophical  discussions  directed  toward  any  of 
the  questions  of  the  day  in  Church  or  State.  For 
every  exhortation  he  turns,  not  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment, but  to  the  holy  character  and  teachings  of  a 
Socrates  or  a  Plato.  It  is  quite  in  keeping  with  all  > 
we  know  of  him  that  he  should  write  to  his  friend 
Sadoleto,  begging  him  to  hurry  up  his  work  on  St. 
Paul's  Epistles  and  turn  to  Hortensius ;  for,  he  adds, 
"The  barbaric  style  of  Paul  will  ruin  your  taste. 
Stop  this  child's  play,  which  is  unworthy  of  an  ear- 
nest man." 

This  Jacopo  Sadoleto,  Bishop  of  Carpentras,  after- 
ward, like  Bembo,  cardinal  under  Paul  III.,  is  a  good 


Hadrian  of  Corneto.  325 

representative  of  the  Middle  Party,  whose  effort  was 
to  reconcile  ancient  philosophy  and  the  Bible.  He 
answered  his  friend  Fregoso,  who  blamed  him  for 
diverting  any  time  from  the  study  of  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures :  "  The  knowledge  of  liberal  arts  and  philosophy 
must  be  regarded  as  a  distinguished  part  of  true 
wisdom,  as  steps  for  those  who  will  mount  to  God." 
"  For,"  he  asks,  "  do  you  believe  you  will  find  in  the 
nature  of  things  or  in  any  branch  of  science  anything 
which  escaped  the  all-embracing  knowledge  of  Plato 
or  the  intellectual  sharpness  of  Aristotle?"  But  he 
finds  the  stay  of  his  life,  not  "  in  the  teaching  which 
we  owe  to  Aristotle  and  Plato,  but  to  God,  the  teacher 
and  Creator  of  all."  "  In  him  alone  is  the  hope  of 
life."  "  Only  God  can  help  and  hold  in  trouble. 
Only  in  gratitude  to  him  can  we  lead  a  happy  and 
useful  life."  Out  of  this  double  love  of  philosophy 
and  religion  came  his  two  chief  works,  "  The  Praise 
of  Philosophy "  and  "  The  Commentary  on  the 
Epistle  of  Paul  to  the  Romans."  It  is  probable  that 
among  the  cardinals  Contarini  and  Caraffa  shared  his 
views  and  hopes  of  a  philosophy  of  Christ.  Sannazaro, 
the  famous  Neapolitan,  called  the  Christian  Virgil, 
who  crowned  his  popular  eclogues  of  love  and  friend- 
ship with  a  poem  on  the  birth  of  Christ,  over  which 
he  spent  twenty  years  and  his  best  energies,  was 
much  admired  by  this  circle. 

We  find  the  representative  of  that  conservative  and 
strictly  orthodox  Humanism  which  desired  to  use  the 
New  Learning  only  as  a  weapon  for  the  defence  of 
Christianity  and  the  Church  in  the  person  of  Hadrian 
of  Corneto.  It  is  a  puzzle  as  yet  unsolved  by  th<? 


326  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

writers  who  have  alluded  to  it  (e.g.,  Janitschek, 
Gebhardt,  Springer,  Grimm,  et  al.)  why  Hadrian  of 
Corneto  wrote  the  book  "  On  True  Philosophy,"  which 
was  published  in  1507.  He  had  long  been  the  friend 
and  follower  of  Rodrigo  Borgia,  and  when  his  patron 
had  become  Pope  rose  rapidly  in  the  scale  of  curial 
promotion  until  he  obtained  the  red  hat.  Bramante 
built  him  a  magnificent  palace,  and  his  riches  caused 
the  report  that  Alexander  and  Caesar  died  from 
changing  the  cups  in  an  attempt  to  poison  him  in  his 
own  garden.  He  mingled  in  curial  politics,  had  to 
flee  from  the  wrath  of  Julius  II.,  and  was  aware  of 
the  plot  to  assassinate  Leo  X.  In  consequence  of 
this  complicity  he  fled  from  the  city,  was  deposed  in 
contumaciam,  lived  in  Venice,  and,  returning  to  the 
conclave  at  Leo's  death,  was  murdered  on  the  road 
by  his  servant.  He  was  the  author  of  a  poem  on 
"  The  Hunt,"  which  was  much  admired,  and  a  book 
on  "  The  Method  of  Speaking  Latin,"  which  went 
through  many  editions  and  is  called  one  of  the  most 
solid  productions  of  Italian  Humanism.  It  is  difficult 
to  understand  why  such  a  cardinal  should  write  a 
book  opposing  worldly  learning  and  the  study  of 
philosophy,  except  to  confess  an  inner  conviction 
denied  in  his  life.  But  such  is  the  purpose  of  his 
"  De  Vera  Philosophia,"  a  catena  of  quotations  from 
Ambrose,  Jerome,  Augustine,  and  Gregory  the  Great. 
He  begins  by  asserting  that  the  source  of  faith  and 
knowledge  is  the  Bible — that  there  can  be  no  true 
knowledge  without  faith  and  that  human  reason  is 
powerless  for  divine  things.  He  goes  on  to  demand 
an  implicit  faith  in  the  word  of  Scripture  and  to 


The  Spirit  of  the  Latholic  Reaction.   327 

limit  all  knowledge  by  it :  "  For  what  Scripture  leaves 
hidden  human  presumption  may  not  attempt  to 
understand  by  conjecture."  Scripture  is  a  field  on 
which,  if  we  wish  to  build,  we  must  dig  steadily  until 
we  reach  the  rock  which  is  Christ.  None  but  those 
who  have  received  God's  Spirit  understand  his  Word. 
Dialectics  must  be  cast  aside,  and  the  ornaments  of 
rhetoric  are  to  be  despised.  "  If  you  ask  me  the  cir- 
cumference of  the  earth,  I  gladly  confess  I  do  not 
know,  and  it  would  do  me  no  good  to  know.  The 
free  arts  do  not  deserve  the  name,  for  only  Christ 
makes  free.  The  works  of  the  poets,  the  wisdom  of 
the  worldly,  the  pomp  of  style,  are  the  devil's  food. 
What  has  Aristotle  to  do  with  Paul,  or  Plato  with 
Peter?  At  the  last  judgment  the  foolish  Plato  and 
his  scholars  will  be  summoned,  and  the  proofs  of 
Aristotle  will  avail  him  little.  Not  by  the  philos- 
ophers is  true  wisdom.  Though  they  count  and 
measure  the  stars,  though  they  labor  at  grammar, 
rhetoric,  or  music,  it  is  of  no  avail.  They  are  only 
truly  wise  when  they  believe  on  Christ.  There  is  no 
middle  ground.  Who  stands  not  by  Christ  stands 
by  the  d'evil.  Whoso  is  not  in  the  kingdom  of  God 
Is  lost.  Why  shall  I  speak  of  physics,  ethics,  or 
logic?  All  that  human  tongue  can  say  is  in  Holy 
Scripture.  Its  authority  is  greater  than  the  power 
of  the  whole  human  spirit." 

Already,  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
there  was  stirring  in  Roman  Humanism  the  spirit  of 
the  Catholic  Reform.  For  in  Sadoleto  we  see  the 
complete  union  of  letters  and  religion  afterward  to 
be  shaped  into  the  elaborate  educational  system  of 


328  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

the  Jesuits,  while  Hadrian's  book  foretells  the  fiery 
zeal  of  implicit  orthodoxy,  despising  all  things  in 
comparison  to  the  fathers,  the  Church,  and  the  Bible, 
which  was  to  mount  the  throne  in  Paul  IV. 

This  type  of  prelate,  using  knowledge  in  the  ser- 
vice of  an  orthodoxy  which  loved  existing  institutions 
and  desired  to  reform  them,  appears  at  this  time  in 
two  men  illustrious  in  the  service  of  Spain.  Both 
were  learned,  one  in  the  Old  Learning,  the  other  in 
the  New ;  one  thought  Humanism  dangerous,  the 
other  welcomed  it ;  but  both  were  alike  in  their  de- 
votion to  the  Church  and  their  desire  for  reform. 

Hadrian  Dedel  was  born  in  Utrecht  in  1459.  He 
received  his  education  at  Deventer  and  Louvain, 
where  he  studied  especially  Thomas  Aquinas  and 
Peter  Lombard.  As  a  young  licentiate  his  lectures 
and  skill  in  disputation  won  him  a  large  fame,  which 
led  the  Grand  Duchess  Margaret  to  give  him  money 
to  take  his  degree  and  become  professor  of  theology. 
The  fruit  of  his  studies  appeared  in  a  commentary  on 
Peter  Lombard  and  in  a  collection  of  scholastic  dis- 
cussions entitled  "  Questiones  Quodlibeticae  " — a  love 
of  the  Old  Learning  which  he  never  lost,  for  in  1 5  1 5  he 
wrote  advising  the  destruction  of  the  books  of  Reuch- 
lin.  Hadrian's  reputation  for  learning  and  piety 
induced  the  Emperor  Maximilian  to  appoint  him  tutor 
to  his  grandson  Charles.  The  other  grandfather, 
Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  to  whom  he  was  sent  as 
ambassador,  appointed  him  Bishop  of  Tortosa  in  1515. 
He  had  won  the  affection  of  his  pupil  in  spite  of  his 
steady  opposition  to  Charles's  desire  to  spend  more 
time  in  knightly  exercises  than  upon  books.  For 


Cardinal  Ximenes.  329 

the  young  Prince,  not  being  endowed  by  nature  with 
a  pleasing  presence,  labored  hard  to  attain  the  per- 
fect horsemanship  which  he  displayed  in  his  stately- 
entries.  When  Charles  succeeded  to  the  throne  of 
Spain  he  associated  Hadrian  with  Cardinal  Ximenes 
in  the  management  of  the  affairs  of  his  kingdom,  and 
shortly  afterward  Leo  X.  made  him  a  cardinal. 

This  Cardinal  Ximenes,  now  eighty  years  old,  was 
one  of  the  ornaments  of  the  College,  though  his 
honors  and  duties  kept  him  from  Rome.  He  dis- 
played that  union  of  patriotism,  zeal  for  the  Church, 
and  love  of  letters  which  during  the  next  century, 
the  blooming-time  of  the  Spanish  race,  was  to  be 
characteristic  of  its  greatest  men. 

He  was  born  in  1436,  of  a  noble  family  of  fallen 
fortunes,  and  graduated  in  theology  from  the  Uni- 
versity of  Salamanca,  where  he  lived  for  six  years  as 
a  private  tutor.  At  the  age  of  twenty-two  he  went 
to  Rome,  where  his  knowledge  of  canon  law  enabled 
him  to  live  as  a  consistorial  advocate.  He  returned 
after  six  years  with  letters  expectivce,  which  gave  him 
a  claim  upon  the  first  vacant  benefice  in  the  see  of 
Toledo.  These  letters  had  frequently  been  de- 
nounced as  an  abuse,  and  were  suppressed  by  the 
Council  of  Basle,  but  as  the  Pope  denied  its  authority, 
they  were  still  granted.  The  historic  objections  to 
the  abuse  of  the  expectivce  strengthened  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Toledo,  who  wished  to  confer  the  first 
vacant  benefice  upon  an  ecclesiastic  of  his  household, 
in  resisting  the  Papal  grant.  He  imprisoned  Ximenes 
for  six  years,  vainly  endeavoring  to  wrest  from  him 
the  surrender  of  the  benefice.  At  the  end  of  that 


330  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

time,  despairing  of  bending  the  will  of  the  prisoner, 
the  Archbishop  gave  him  freedom  and  permitted  his 
induction.  Ximenes  wisely  exchanged  his  benefice 
for  one  in  another  diocese,  where  he  soon  rose  to  be 
vicar-general.  But,  displeased  by  the  care  of  the 
details  of  the  episcopal  jurisdiction,  he  joined  the 
strict  Franciscans,  and  dwelt  for  many  years  in  a 
hermitage,  where  he  formed  the  ascetic  habits  which 
he  practised  all  his  life.  From  this  retreat  he  was 
called  to  be  confessor  of  the  Queen,  and  shortly  after 
was  elected  provincial  of  his  order  for  Castile.  In 
his  new  dignity  he  kept  to  the  strictest  letter  of  the 
rule  of  St.  Francis,  traveling  on  foot,  and  often  begging 
his  food.  He  soon  received  the  appointment  to  the 
Archbishopric  of  Toledo,  which  made  him  at  once  Pri- 
mate of  Spain,  head  of  the  nobility,  and  the  richest  sub- 
ject in  the  kingdom.  He  gave  great  offence  by  refus- 
ing to  assume  the  state  usual  to  his  office,  and  still 
traveling  on  foot  or  by  a  mule,  with  one  attendant. 
A  letter  was  obtained  from  the  Pope  commanding 
him  "  outwardly  to  conform  to  the  dignity  of  your 
state  of  life  in  your  dress,  attendants,  and  everything 
else  relating  to  the  promotion  of  that  respect  due  to 
your  authority."  Henceforth  his  state  was  royal, 
but  he  always  wore  a  hair  shirt  under  his  robes,  and 
he  used  the  monkish  scourge  so  severely  on  himself 
that  his  friends  had  to  procure  another  letter  of 
remonstrance  from  the  Pope. 

He  first  signalized  himself  by  zeal  for  the  conver- 
sion of  the  Moors,  but  recently  become  Spanish 
subjects  under  the  treaty  of  Granada.  He  frequently 
invited  to  his  palace  the  Moorish  teachers  and  con- 


The  Conversion  of  the  Moors.          331 

ferred  with  them  on  religion.  "  To  impress  his 
instructions  upon  their  sensual  minds,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  make  them  presents  of  costly  articles  of 
dress,  etc.,  and  to  do  this  encumbered  his  revenues 
for  years.  The  conversion  of  some  of  these  alfaquis 
was  quickly  followed  by  the  conversion  of  great 
numbers  of  other  Moors,  so  that  after  laboring  only 
two  months  Ximenes  was  able  to  baptize  four  thou- 
sand people,  in  December,  1499."  l  He  also  burned 
eighty  thousand  Moorish  books  in  the  market-place 
of  Granada,  sparing  only  the  works  on  medicine,  and 
defended  his  action  against  those  who  condemned  it 
as  a  violation  of  the  treaty  of  surrender  made  with 
the  Moors,  and  the  edicts  of  the  Synod  of  Toledo, 
by  which  no  Moor  was  to  be  forced  to  embrace 
Christianity.  He  felt  himself  restrained  by  no  treaty 
against  the  descendants  of  renegades  who  had  been 
converted  to  Mohammedanism  from  Christianity  dur- 
ing the  Moorish  dominion.  The  children  of  all  such 
though  in  a  remote  generation,  he  seized,  carried  off, 
and  forcibly  received  them  into  the  Church.  An 
attempt  to  thus  arrest  a  Moorish  young  woman  raised 
a  mob  which  killed  the  Archbishop's  officer.  The 
courage  of  the  Governor  allayed  the  tumult,  and 
Ximenes  persuaded  the  King  to  offer  to  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  guilty  city  the  choice  of  being  baptized 
or  suffering  the  penalties  of  treason.  They  chose 
the  former,  and  thus  in  about  a  year  Ximenes  con- 
verted Granada. 

His  associate  in  these  labors,  the  Archbishop  of 

i  "  Cardinal  Ximenes,"  by  Dr.  von  Hefele,   afterward  Roman 
Catholic  Bishop  of  Rothenburg. 


332  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Granada,  had  caused  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  other 
religious  works  to  be  translated  into  Arabic.  But 
Ximenes  drawing  his  attention  to  the  danger  likely 
to  arise  in  the  minds  of  the  rude  and  ignorant  from 
the  reading  of  the  Bible,  it  was  decided  to  withdraw 
the  Arabic  Scriptures  and  circulate  only  the  safer 
literature  of  devotion  and  edification. 

Meanwhile  the  Primate  had  been  turning  his 
energies  to  the  direction  of  the  reform  of  education, 
and  became  the  most  munificent  of  the  long  roll  of 
patrons  and  founders  of  schools  which  adorns  the 
reign  of  Isabella.  His  great  University  of  Alcala, 
begun  in  1500,  was  opened  about  ten  years  later. 
The  head  college  of  San  Idlefonso  had  thirty-three 
professors,  one  for  each  year  of  the  life  of  Christ,'and 
twelve  chaplains,  one  for  each  of  the  twelve  apostles. 
Ample  provision  was  made  for  the  study  of  Latin, 
Greek,  and  Hebrew  according  to  modern  methods, 
and  the  whole  University  was  magnificently  endowed. 
Within  twenty  years  it  numbered  seven  thousand 
students. 

It  was  with  the  aid  of  this  corps  of  scholars  that 
Ximenes  began  the  Complutensian  polyglot.  The 
ideas  which  moved  him  to  the  work  are  set  forth  in 
its  preface :  "  No  translations  represent  perfectly 
the  sense  of  the  original.  The  transcripts  of  the 
Vulgate  differ  so  much  from  one  another  that  it  is 
necessary  for  us  to  correct  the  Old  Testament  by 
the  Hebrew  text  and  the  New  Testament  by  the 
Greek  text.  Every  theologian  should  be  able,  also, 
to  drink  of  that  water  which  springeth  up  to  everlast- 
ing life  at  the  fountainhead  itself.  This  is  the  reason, 


The  Complutensian  Polyglot.          333 

therefore,  why  we  have  ordered  the  Bible  to  be 
printed  in  the  original  language  with  different  trans- 
lations. Our  object  is  to  revive  the  hitherto  neg- 
lected study  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures."  Upon  this 
work  he  is  said  to  have  spent  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars,  whose  purchasing  value 
was  perhaps  five  times  what  it  is  now.  It  was  dedi- 
cated to  Leo  X.  The  New  Testament  appeared  be- 
fore Erasmus's,  but  did  not  circulate  outside  of  Spain 
until  after  his.  One  of  the  editors,  Zuniga,  having 
sharply  attacked  the  notes  of  Erasmus  and  spoken 
contemptuously  of  the  northern  scholar  in  the 
presence  of  Ximenes,  the  Cardinal  said :  "  God 
grant  that  all  writers  may  do  their  work  as  well  as 
he  has  done  his.  You  are  bound  either  to  give  us 
something  better  or  not  to  blame  the  labors  of 
others."  The  New  Testament  volume  contains  the 
Vulgate  and  a  Greek  text,  with  a  system  of  notation 
indicating  corresponding  words  in  the  two  languages. 
The  four  volumes  of  the  Old  Testament  contain  the 
Hebrew,  the  Septuagint,  the  Vulgate,  the  Targum 
of  the  Pentateuch,  and  Latin  translations  of  the 
Septuagint  and  the  Targum.  The  work  is  accom- 
panied by  Hebrew,  Chaldee,  and  Greek  lexicons  and 
grammars.  Only  six  hundred  copies  were  printed, 
and  it  soon  became  rare ;  but  its  influence  passed  on 
through  the  Antwerp  and  Paris  polyglots,  until  all 
were  replaced  by  the  London  polyglot  of  1657. 

But  the  work  of  Ximenes  was  not  confined  to 
missions,  education,  or  patronage  of  sacred  literature. 
He  spent  his  enormous  income  freely  in  public 
works,  churches,  convents,  and  a  great  aqueduct  for 


334  J^  he  Age  of  the  Renascence. 


his  native  town.  It  was  not  long  after  he  became 
Primate  of  Spain  that  he  conceived  the  idea  of  a  new 
crusade,  and  tried  to  rouse  the  kings  of  Spain,  Por- 
tugal, and  England.  But  he  was  obliged  to  content 
himself  with  a  small  crusade,  which  he  led  himself 
against  Oran,  a  Moorish  town  of  North  Africa  grown 
rich  by  piracy.  He  equipped  the  expedition  of  four- 
teen thousand  men  at  his  own  expense.  The  city 
was  taken  at  the  first  assault,  and  the  inhabitants, 
men,  women,  and  children,  put  to  the  sword.  The 
expedition  returned  with  five  hundred  thousand 
florins  and  eight  thousand  captives,  having  added  a 
new  province  to  the  Spanish  crown. 

On  the  death  of  Ferdinand  it  was  natural,  there- 
fore, that  Ximenes  should  be  appointed  Regent  of 
Spain  until  Charles  should  return  from  Flanders  to 
be  crowned.  But  scarcely  had  the  new  King  reached 
Spain  than  he  retired  the  great  Cardinal  from  the 
service  of  State,  and  a  few  weeks  later  Ximenes  died. 
The  exact  cause  of  his  abrupt  dismissal  is  not  known, 
but  probably  the  old  man  of  eighty-two  was  not 
flexible  to  the  plans  of  a  new  government  headed  by 
an  ambitious  boy. 

For  the  destinies  of  Europe  were  at  this  time 
mingled  with  the  ambitious  dreams  of  three  boys, 
each  anxious  to  display  his  skill  and  the  power  of  his 
new  kingdom. 

The  ablest  of  the  three  was  Charles  L,  King  of 
Spain.  His  grandfather,  Ferdinand,  had  married 
Isabella  of  Castile,  conquered  Navarre,  expelled  the 
Moors  from  Granada,  and  thus  united  Spain  from  the 
Pyrenees  to  the  Mediterranean.  And  in  the  partition 


The  Boy  Kings.  335 

of  Italy  he  had  added  to  the  possessions  of  his  house 
the  crown  of  Naples  and  Sicily,  while  the  discoveries 
of  Columbus  and  the  bull  of  the  Pope  made  him 
master  of  the  gold-mines  of  the  New  World.  Through 
his  paternal  grandmother,  daughter  of  Charles  the 
Bold,  Charles  was  heir  to  the  Netherlands,  whose 
cities  had  succeeded  Venice  as  the  centre  of  European 
trade,  and  Burgundy,  which  is  now  the  northwest 
corner  of  France.  He  was  also  the  heir  of  his  grand- 
father, the  Archduke  of  Austria.  Thus  in  1516,  at 
the  age  of  sixteen,  he  inherited  a  power  greater  than 
any  prince  since  Charlemagne.- 

England,  whose  terrible  civil  War  of  the  Roses  closed 
with  the  fifteenth  century,  was  ruled  by  Henry  VIII., 
a  beautiful  and  talented  Prince  of  twenty-five,  the 
patron  of  More,  Erasmus,  and  Holbein,  but  self-in- 
dulgent and  possessed,  in  spite  of  his  common  sense, 
by  a  restless  thirst  for  distinction. 

France,  to  which  the  great  vassal  duchy  of  Brit- 
tany had  just  been  organically  united,  was  in  1515 
inherited  by  Francis  I.,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one. 
He  was  an  apt  pupil  of  the  culture  of  the  Renascence, 
and  not  slack  in  the  practice  of  its  vices,  from  which 
his  two  predecessors  died.  He  was  a  skilful  jouster, 
and  aspired  to  be  the  first  knight  of  Europe.  This 
desire  was  flattered  in  the  battle  of  Marignano,  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  resulted  in  restoring  French  rule 
over  the  duchy  of  Milan  and  bartering  the  liberties 
and  income  of  the  French  Church  to  Leo  X. 

At  the  death  of  Maximilian,  King  of  the  Romans 
(a  title  borne  by  the  Emperor  elect  of  Germany  until 
he  was  crowned  at  Rome),  all  three  of  these  young 


336  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

kings  became  candidates  for  the  imperial  dignity 
which  gave  the  honor  of  the  headship  of  Europe. 
It  was  a  dignity  to  which  none  but  a  powerful  and 
wealthy  prince  could  venture  any  longer  to  aspire, 
for  the  office  had  almost  no  revenue  and  little  more 
power  to  enforce  authority  than  the  incumbent  could 
raise  from  his  personal  resources.  The  German 
Empire  was  simply  a  congeries  of  states  and  com- 
monwealths, bishoprics,  free  cities,  and  dynastic 
principalities,  under  an  elective  head,  counselled  by 
a  diet  of  princes  and  ambassadors,  but  possessed  of 
no  organ  of  government  by  which  any  class  of  the 
German  body  politic,  except  its  jealous  and  warring 
princes,  could  rightly  form  or  express  a  common  pur- 
pose. Among  the  hundreds  of  members  of  this  loose 
confederation  smaller  leagues  arose,  which,  as  we 
have  seen  in  the  life  of  Reuchlin,  sometimes  main- 
tained common  tribunals,  sometimes  oppressed  a 
weaker  member  of  the  Empire.  Strife  between  these 
dynasties  and  commonwealths  was  incessant,  nor  was 
it  looked  upon  as  civil  and  unnatural  war  that  Nurem- 
berg should  fight  with  a  neighboring  city,  or  a  great 
noble  repress  with  arms  the  ambition  of  some  usurp- 
ing bishop.  Just  before  the  end  of  the  century, 
indeed,  the  Reichstag  had  endeavored  to  establish  a 
perpetual  land  peace,  but  within  ten  years  a  war 
between  the  Swabian  and  the  Swiss  Leagues  deso- 
lated South  Germany,  and  another  contest  over  the 
will  of  the  petty  Duke  of  Baiern-Landshut  laid  waste 
the  rich  provinces  of  the  Rhine. 

The  choice  of  the  Emperor  of  this  confederation 
was  in  the  hands  of  seven  electors :  the  Archbishops 


Bought  and  Sold.  337 

of  Mainz,  Cologne,  and  Treves,  the  King  of  Bohemia, 
the  Duke  of  Saxony,  the  Count  Palatine  of  the  Rhine, 
and  the  Margrave  of  Brandenburg.  These  princes 
knew  the  value  of  their  votes  in  this  crisis,  and  the 
French  agents  went  into  Germany  followed  by  a 
pack-train  of  gold.  When  the  ambassador  protested 
that  such  a  way  to  the  imperial  crown  was  beneath 
his  King,  Francis  answered,  "  If  you  had  to  do  with 
people  who  possessed  even  a  shadow  of  virtue  your 
counsel  would  be  good ;  but  in  these  times  whoever 
wants  the  Papacy  or  the  Empire,  or  anything  else, 
can  only  get  it  by  bribery  or  force."  Henry  of  Eng- 
land had  no  chance  against  his  wealthier  antagonists. 
But  the  Spanish  agents  were  not  behind  in  offering 
coin  and  good  marriages,  which  served  as  well.  The 
bargaining  was  sharp.  The  Count  Palatine  was  said 
to  have  changed  sides  six  times,  and  finally  wrote 
that  "  we  cannot  do  anything  better,  worthier,  more 
agreeable  to  Christ,  or  more  wholesome  for  all  Chris- 
tians than  to  elect  Francis."  When  the  Spanish 
ambassador  told  the  Archbishop  of  Mainz  that  it  was 
a  shame  to  sell  himself  to  France,  he  replied  that 
Spain  could  have  him  by  giving  more,  and,  starting 
at  one  hundred  thousand  gulden  additional,  finally 
took  twenty  thousand  after  three  days  of  chaffering. 
To  this  willingness  to  sell  his  vote  there  was  only 
one  exception,  Frederick  the  Wise  of  Saxony,  whose 
honest  patriotism  finally  brought  him  from  three  of 
the  electors  the  offer  of  the  crown.  The  Pope  urged 
him  to  accept,  but  Frederick  was  too  modest  or  too 
wise  to  do  so.  For  the  Pope  did  not  want  either  of 
the  great  competitors  to  gain  the  prize.  Francis 


338  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

held  the  key  of  North  Italy  in  Milan.  Charles  was 
King  of  Naples,  and  it  was  Leo's  policy  to  keep  the 
balance  of  power  between  them,  to  play  one  off 
against  the  other  and  make  his  profit  out  of  the 
game.  He  who  had  power  to  crush  the  other  would 
be  too  powerful  for  a  safe  neighbor  to  the  house  of 
the  Medici  or  the  states  of  the  Church. 

Charles  won  the  prize,  partly  because  the  German 
people  preferred  the  grandson  of  Maximilian  to  an 
emperor  who  spoke  a  foreign  tongue ;  partly,  also, 
because  the  agents  of  Francis  had  put  too  much 
weight  on  the  power  and  wealth  of  their  monarch, 
his  personal  strength  and  skill  in  arms,  his  splendid 
army,  and  his  obedient  kingdom.  And  the  electors, 
who  thought  little  of  the  Turkish  war,  but  much  of 
their  own  independence,  preferred  the  weak  and 
silent  Charles.  So  the  able,  strong-willed,  close- 
mouthed,  and  zealously  pious  lad  was  crowned  Em- 
peror of  Germany  at  nineteen,  to  the  wrath  of  Francis 
and  the  despair  of  the  Pope. 


PERIOD   III. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

THE  NORTH  LOSES  PATIENCE  WITH  THE  PAPACY 
— THE  LEADERS  OF  REVOLT  IN  GERMANY, 
SWITZERLAND,  FRANCE,  AND  ENGLAND. 

OTH  triumphant  Emperor  and  furious 
Pope  were  confronted  by  a  force  neither 
was  large  enough  to  understand.  For, 
great  as  Charles  was  to  become  in  politics 
and  statecraft,  he  was  not  one  of  the  rare 
men,  born  and  not  made,  who  are  capable  of  appre- 
ciating or  directing  the  play  of  those  primal  social 
forces  whose  appearance  foretells  the  change  of 
ancient  institutions  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  era 
of  history.  He  could  handle  skilfully  jealous  dy- 
nastic interests,  but  he  never  understood  the  meaning 
of  patriotism.  He  could  rule  well  in  peace  and  war 
as  the  head  of  the  greatest  house  in  Europe  and  the 
God-anointed  King  of  many  lands,  but  he  never 
knew  the  force  of  national  feeling  struggling  half 
unconsciously  for  liberty.  He  was  a  zealous  child  of 
the  Church,  who  in  his  old  age  turned  aside  from  the 
glories  of  earth  to  prepare  his  soul  for  heaven,  but  he 
never  felt  a  thrill  of  the  passion  for  truth  which  in- 
spires the  voices  of  those  who  cry  in  the  wilderness. 

339 


34-Q  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

This  great  man  of  a  narrow  type,  and  the  Pope, 
whose  highly  cultivated  taste  was  without  a  touch  of 
creative  power,  were  confronted  by  a  movement 
whose  violence  can  be  compared  to  nothing  else  in 
European  history  but  the  Barbarian  Invasion  and  the 
French  Revolution. 

The  Reformation  of  Religion  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury was  a  European  movement,  the  result  of  forces 
which  had  been  working  for  generations,  and  the 
men  who  made  it  were  also  made  by  it.  It  varied 
almost  immediately  into  separate  ecclesiastical  insti- 
tutions and  produced  different  types  of  theology, 
but  it  was  not  in  any  sense  sectarian.  The  influence 
of  it  is  nowhere  more  visible  than  in  the  reform 
within  the  ancient  Church,  known  as  the  Catholic 
Reaction.  This  emerged  nearly  a  generation  later, 
at  a  time  beyond  the  limits  of  this  sketch,  but  its 
spiritual  source  has  been  briefly  indicated  in  the 
Humanistic  orthodoxy  of  Spain  and  Rome.  Neither 
was  the  Reformation  in  any  sense  a  national  move- 
ment. For  one  hundred  years  the  transalpine  world 
had  asked  again  and  again  for  that  "  reform  of  the 
Church  in  head  and  members  "  which  the  Council  of 
Constance  had  left  to  the  Popes.  And  when  Sixtus 
IV.,  Innocent  VIII.,  Alexander  VI.,  Julius  II.,  and 
Leo  X.  had  demonstrated  the  unwillingness  of  the 
Papacy  to  reform  itself,  the  Council  of  the  Lateran 
chose  that  instant  to  revoke  the  decrees  of  Constance 
and  deny  the  right  of  the  Church  to  reform  the 
Papacy.  The  loyalty  with  which  the  nations  of  the 
north  had  clung,  in  spite  of  almost  unbearable  rebuffs 
and  disappointments,  to  the  venerable  institution  of 


Martin  Luther.  341 

their  fathers  was  exhausted.  They  were  weary  of 
patience.  At  last  they  were  reluctantly  compelled 
to  admit  that  they  were  confronted,  not  by  an  ec- 
clesiastical theory,  but  by  an  intolerable  religious 
situation.  They  abandoned  all  hope  of  reform  and 
ripened  rapidly  for  revolution. 

And  the  men  who  could  give  voice  and  form  to 
this  new  desire  were  at  hand  among  the  Younger 
Humanists.  They  spoke  almost  simultaneously  in 
four  places  where  we  have  seen  the  New  Learning 
firmly  established.  By  1525  the  demand  for  revolt 
against  the  traditional  institution  of  the  Papacy, 
on  the  ground  of  the  New  Testament  and  the  con- 
science, had  been  heard  from  Martin  Luther  in 
Germany,  from  Zwingli  in  Switzerland,  from  spiritual 
descendants  of  Colet  in  England,  from  the  friends  of 
Faber  Stapulensis  in  France.  And  all  of  these  men 
read  the  New  Testament,  on  which  they  based  their 
criticism  of  existing  institutions,  in  the  edition  of 
Erasmus. 

Martin  Luther  was  an  Augustinian  monk  who 
taught  theology  in  the  new  University  of  Wittenberg, 
founded  by  Frederick  the  Wise  of  Saxony.  In  1517, 
when  a  Dominican  by  the  name  of  Tetzel  came  up 
through  Germany  selling  indulgences  for  the  triple 
benefit  of  the  Archbishop  of  Mayence,  the  banking- 
house  of  Fugger  in  Augsburg,  his  creditor,  and  the 
Papal  fund  of  St.  Peter's,  Luther  was  roused,  as  many 
men  of  his  day  had  been,  by  this  abuse  of  a  traditional 
custom  of  the  Church.  Tetzel  was  forbidden  to  enter 
Saxony  by  the  Elector,  who  had  endowed  the  Uni- 
versity by  impounding  the  money  gained  by  a  similar 


34-Q  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

This  great  man  of  a  narrow  type,  and  the  Pope, 
whose  highly  cultivated  taste  was  without  a  touch  of 
creative  power,  were  confronted  by  a  movement 
whose  violence  can  be  compared  to  nothing  else  in 
European  history  but  the  Barbarian  Invasion  and  the 
French  Revolution. 

The  Reformation  of  Religion  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury was  a  European  movement,  the  result  of  forces 
which  had  been  working  for  generations,  and  the 
men  who  made  it  were  also  made  by  it.  It  varied 
almost  immediately  into  separate  ecclesiastical  insti- 
tutions and  produced  different  types  of  theology, 
but  it  was  not  in  any  sense  sectarian.  The  influence 
of  it  is  nowhere  more  visible  than  in  the  reform 
within  the  ancient  Church,  known  as  the  Catholic 
Reaction.  This  emerged  nearly  a  generation  later, 
at  a  time  beyond  the  limits  of  this  sketch,  but  its 
spiritual  source  has  been  briefly  indicated  in  the 
Humanistic  orthodoxy  of  Spain  and  Rome.  Neither 
was  the  Reformation  in  any  sense  a  national  move- 
ment. For  one  hundred  years  the  transalpine  world 
had  asked  again  and  again  for  that  "  reform  of  the 
Church  in  head  and  members  "  which  the  Council  of 
Constance  had  left  to  the  Popes.  And  when  Sixtus 
IV.,  Innocent  VIII.,  Alexander  VI.,  Julius  II.,  and 
Leo  X.  had  demonstrated  the  unwillingness  of  the 
Papacy  to  reform  itself,  the  Council  of  the  Lateran 
chose  that  instant  to  revoke  the  decrees  of  Constance 
and  deny  the  right  of  the  Church  to  reform  the 
Papacy.  The  loyalty  with  which  the  nations  of  the 
north  had  clung,  in  spite  of  almost  unbearable  rebuffs 
and  disappointments,  to  the  venerable  institution  of 


Martin  Luther.  341 

their  fathers  was  exhausted.  They  were  weary  of 
patience.  At  last  they  were  reluctantly  compelled 
to  admit  that  they  were  confronted,  not  by  an  ec- 
clesiastical theory,  but  by  an  intolerable  religious 
situation.  They  abandoned  all  hope  of  reform  and 
ripened  rapidly  for  revolution. 

And  the  men  who  could  give  voice  and  form  to 
this  new  desire  were  at  hand  among  the  Younger 
Humanists.  They  spoke  almost  simultaneously  in 
four  places  where  we  have  seen  the  New  Learning 
firmly  established.  By  1525  the  demand  for  revolt 
against  the  traditional  institution  of  the  Papacy, 
on  the  ground  of  the  New  Testament  and  the  con- 
science, had  been  heard  from  Martin  Luther  in 
Germany,  from  Zwingli  in  Switzerland,  from  spiritual 
descendants  of  Colet  in  England,  from  the  friends  of 
Faber  Stapulensis  in  France.  And  all  of  these  men 
read  the  New  Testament,  on  which  they  based  their 
criticism  of  existing  institutions,  in  the  edition  of 
Erasmus. 

Martin  Luther  was  an  Augustinian  monk  who 
taught  theology  in  the  new  University  of  Wittenberg, 
founded  by  Frederick  the  Wise  of  Saxony.  In  1517, 
when  a  Dominican  by  the  name  of  Tetzel  came  up 
through  Germany  selling  indulgences  for  the  triple 
benefit  of  the  Archbishop  of  Mayence,  the  banking- 
house  of  Fugger  in  Augsburg,  his  creditor,  and  the 
Papal  fund  of  St.  Peter's,  Luther  was  roused,  as  many 
men  of  his  day  had  been,  by  this  abuse  of  a  traditional 
custom  of  the  Church.  Tetzel  was  forbidden  to  enter 
Saxony  by  the  Elector,  who  had  endowed  the  Uni- 
versity by  impounding  the  money  gained  by  a  similar 


342  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

traffic  sixteen  years  before.  But  Tetzel  approached 
as  near  to  the  Saxon  boundary  as  he  dared  and  set 
up  his  booth.  Luther,  who  had  already  preached 
twice  to  warn  the  people  against  buying,  published 
in  October,  1517,  ninety-five  theses  in  Latin,  in- 
tended to  provoke  an  academic  disputation  upon  the 
virtue  of  indulgences.  These  theses  were  addressed 
to  the  learned.  They  were  heard  by  the  people. 
Translated  at  once,  in  fourteen  days  they  were  read 
by  all  Germany.  Two  of  the  chief  prosecutors  in 
the  affair  of  Reuchlin,  which  was  still  dragging  its 
course  through  the  courts  of  the  Church,  immediately 
attacked  Luther  as  a  heretic,  though  as  a  matter  of 
fact  his  theses  denied  no  proposition  which  had 
ever  been  authoritatively  established  by  the  Church 
as  de  fide.  And  his  acquaintance,  Johann  Eck,  like 
himself  trained  in  the  New  Learning,  vigorous, 
able,  with  a  prodigious  memory  and  great  dialectic 
skill,  denounced  him  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  Obe- 
lisks." 

Then  Luther  dropped  Latin,  always  a  Saul's  armor 
to  him,  and  came  out  in  his  sermon  on  "  Indulgences 
and  Grace  "  in  rough,  virile  German.  For  he  was 
evidently  of  the  opinion  of  his  contemporary,  the 
Humanist  Glarean,  of  Basle,  who  said  that  it  was  not 
possible  to  describe  Tiberius  in  Latin,  but  in  German 
it  was  easy  to  call  him  "  ein  abgefeimter,  ehrloser, 
znichtiger  Bosewicht."  With  this  swinging  weapon, 
which  he  forged  himself  (he  was  the  first  German  to 
write  great  things  in  his  native  tongue),  Luther  smote 
his  enemies,  hip  and  thigh,  from  the  Baltic  to  the 
Alps.  And  when  Charles  was  elected  Emperor  he 


Luther  and  the  German  People.       343 

was  become,  by  the  testimony  of  friend  and  foe,  the 
most  noted  man  in  Germany. 

In  particular  the  Humanists  had  rallied  to  his  side, 
seeing  in  the  assaults  made  on  him  a  continuation  of 
the  battle  against  Reuchlin.  Early  in  1519  Christo- 
pher Scheurl,  a  common  friend  of  Eck  and  Luther, 
wrote  to  remonstrate  with  Eck  for  attacking  Luther : 
"  Thou  wilt  draw  upon  thyself  the  disfavor  and  hatred 
of  almost  all  Erasmians  and  Reuchlinists,  all  friends 
of  classic  studies,  as  well  as  the  modern  theologians. 
I  have  just  been  through  several  of  the  chief  bishop- 
rics, and  find  everywhere  stately  hosts  of  Martinists." 

But  had  these  been  the  only  allies  Luther  found 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  would  have  perished 
at  the  stake  like  Huss  and  Savonarola.  It  was  well 
for  him  that  he  found  the  support  of  the  German 
people,  rejoicing  that  at  last  they  had  a  man  after 
their  own  heart,  who  could  speak  their  wrath  at  a 
system  by  which  Italian  prelates  drained  their  gold 
for  a  luxurious  court.  To  this  support  of  the  Ger- 
man people  Luther  soon  began  to  make  direct  ap- 
peal. For  slowly  in  these  years  he  passed  through 
the  feeling  of  a  prophet  protesting  against  traditional 
abuses  in  a  venerable  institution,  and  became  pos- 
sessed by  the  idea  that  he  was  the  defender  of  the 
truth  of  the  Gospel  and  the  liberty  of  a  Christian 
people  against  the  false  tyranny  of  a  foreign  Anti- 
christ. He  thus  united  to  the  desire  for  reform  that 
patriotic  feeling,  speaking  to  the  people  in  their  own 
tongue,  which  we  have  marked  as  one  of  the  three 
tendencies  observable  among  German  men  of  letters 
for  the  last  two  generations. 


344  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  progress  in  this 
direction  was  made  easier  to  him  by  the  example  of 
Ulrich  von  Hutten.  Before  he  left  Italy,  some  months 
before  the  posting  of  Luther's  theses,  Hutten  had 
arranged  to  receive  a  copy  of  the  pamphlet  of  Lau- 
rentius  Valla  on  the  so-called  Donation  of  Con- 
stantine.  This  was  the  first  full  exposition  that  the 
document  on  which  the  Dominium  Temporale  had 
long  been  canonically  based  was  a  forgery  (a  fact 
now  universally  recognized  by  all  scholars,  Roman 
Catholic  and  Protestant  alike).  Hutten  printed  the 
manuscript  with  an  ironical  dedication  to  the  Pope, 
who  would  of  course  rejoice  at  the  proof  that  the 
temporal  power,  which  evil  Popes  had  so  frequently 
misused,  was  founded  in  error.  He  followed  this  by 
his  "  Address  on  the  Turkish  War  "  to  the  princes 
assembled  at  the  Reichstag  in  Augsburg  in  1518,  in 
which  appears  the  consciousness  that  Germany  had 
been  drained  by  Papal  taxes  for  crusades  which  never 
marched,  when  the  Germans,  if  they  would,  could 
defend  themselves  against  the  infidel.  "  Therefore," 
he  ends,  "  if  I  may  say  boldly  what  I  think,  you 
must  in  this  war  be  on  your  guard  against  Rome  as 
much  as  against  Asia."  Luther  was  in  Augsburg  at 
this  time,  but  Hutten  gave  little  thought  to  him,  re- 
garding the  discussion  of  his  theses  as  only  a  monk's 
quarrel.  But  as  the  conflict  deepened  around  Luther, 
Hutten,  who  cared  nothing  for  the  religious  questions 
at  issue,  began  to  see  in  him  a  German  oppressed  by 
the  great  foe  of  Germany,  and  in  two  pamphlets  of 
the  spring  of  1520  led  the  way  in  the  path  of  an 
appeal  to  the  nation. 


"The  Romish  Triads"  345 

"  The  Romish  Triads  "  is  a  dialogue  in  the  course 
of  which  one  of  the  speakers  repeats  the  triads  of 
Vadiscus,  a  traveler  returned  from  Rome.  Three 
things,  he  says,  are  banished  from  Rorrfe — simplicity, 
temperance,  and  piety.  Three  things  are  demanded 
by  every  one  in  Rome — short  masses,  old  gold,  and 
a  licentious  life.  Of  three  things  no  one  in  Rome 
cares  to  hear — of  a  General  Council,  of  the  reforma- 
tion of  the  clergy,  and  of  the  beginnings  of  common 
sense  among  the  Germans.  With  three  things  the 
Romans  can  never  be  satisfied — money  for  bishops' 
palliums,  Papal  monthly  taxes,  and  annates.  Three 
things  pilgrims  are  wont  to  bring  from  Rome — stained 
consciences,  spoiled  stomachs,  and  empty  purses,  etc. 
The  hearer  listens  with  applause  and  closes  the  dia- 
logue thus :  "  See  in  Rome  the  great  storehouse  of 
the  world,  in  which  is  heaped  up  what  is  robbed  from 
all  lands.  In  the  middle  of  it  is  the  great  weevil, 
surrounded  by  his  fellow-devourers,  who  destroy 
huge  heaps  of  fruit.  They  have  first  sucked  our 
blood,  then  gnawed  off  the  flesh;  now  they  have 
come  to  the  marrow  and  are  mashing  up  our  very 
bones.  Will  not  the  Germans  take  themselves  to 
their  weapons  and  rush  on  with  fire  and  sword  ?  We 
give  them  our  gold ;  we  pay  for  their  horses  and  dogs 
and  mules  and  the  instruments  of  their  vices.  With 
our  money  they  nourish  their  wickedness,  pass  pleas- 
ant days,  robe  in  purple,  bridle  their  horses  and  mules 
with  gold,  build  marble  palaces.  When  shall  we  gain 
sense  and  revenge  our  shame  and  the  universal  ruin  ?  " 

The  pamphlet  entitled  "  The  Spectators  "  was  even 
stronger.  It  represents  Phoebus  and  his  driver  Phae- 


348  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

everybody  calls,  '  General  Council.'  Compared  to 
this,  the  trouble  between  Henry  and  Gregory  [Ca- 
nossa]  was  an  affair  of  roses  and  violets."  Luther's 
journey  to  Worms,  to  answer  before  the  Reichstag 
on  a  charge  of  heresy,  was  a  triumph.  Cities  threw 
open  their  gates,  universities  crowned  him  with  honor, 
and  he  entered  the  hall  the  elected  champion  of 
German  freedom. 

There  was  none  of  the  pomp  of  Constance  in  the 
crowded  and  noisy  Reichstag,  but  the  situation  was 
the  same.  To  Luther,  as  to  Huss,  the  word  of  the 
Church  was,  "  Retract  or  be  burned,"  and,  like  Huss, 
Luther  chose  death.  Then,  according  to  the  agree- 
ment, the  Emperor  gave  him  a  safe-conduct  for 
twenty-one  days,  and  launched  against  him  the  ban 
of  the  Empire.  Luther  started  home,  was  taken  out 
of  his  wagon  the  second  day  by  five  men  disguised 
as  robbers,  who  rode  off  with  him,  and  for  two  years 
not  a  hundred  people  knew  where  he  was. 

Meanwhile  Ulrich  Zwingli  had  also  been  slowly 
drifting  into  revolt  against  the  Papacy.  In  his  case 
the  schism  did  not  begin  with  any  sudden  accusation 
of  heresy.  When  he  thundered  from  the  pulpit  of 
Einsiedeln  against  a  vender  of  indulgences,  he  had 
the  approval  of  his  Bishop  and  the  Papal  Legate. 
It  was  shortly  after  this  successful  protest  that  (in 
the  fall  of  1518)  his  name  was  suggested  as  preacher 
of  the  cathedral  of  Zurich.  But  the  appointment 
was  opposed,  as  Zwingli's  friends  wrote  him,  because 
he  was  accused  of  the  seduction  of  the  daughter  of 
a  respectable  man  near  Einsiedeln.  Zwingli  denies 
the  seduction  of  an  honorable  woman  by  acknow- 


Zwingli  Attacks  Indulgences.         349 

ledging  with  shame  that  he  has  not  kept  himself  free 
from  the  company  of  concubines ;  and  this  confession 
of  a  fault  common  to  all  the  clergy  of  the  time  was 
considered  so  unimportant  that  he  was  elected  cathe- 
dral preacher  of  Zurich,  though  in  his  penitent  letter 
he  had  begged  his  friend  to  withdraw  his  name  if  it 
were  thought  that  by  his  election  "  the  cause  of 
Christ  would  suffer." 

He  began  at  once  a  style  of  preaching  new  to  the 
city.  Instead  of  commenting  on  texts,  he  took  up  a 
book  of  the  Bible  and  expounded  it  in  course  from 
beginning  to  end.  In  this  way  he  went  through  the 
whole  New  Testament  in  six  years.  He  was  a  most 
skilful  speaker,  and  had  carefully  trained  his  weak 
voice  until  it  was  flexible  and  penetrating.  To  the 
logical  exposition  of  the  text  he  added  practical 
reflections  upon  the  duties  of  the  city  at  home  and 
abroad,  and  attacks  upon  the  abuses  of  the  times. 
He  had  already  protested  against  indulgences,  and 
when,  early  in  1519,  a  certain  Samson  brought  the 
traffic  into  the  neighborhood,  Zwingli  attacked  it 
fiercely  in  the  pulpit  and  by  protest  to  the  ecclesias- 
tical authorities.  The  result  was  an  inhibition  against 
the  preaching  of  Samson  by  the  Bishop  of  Constance, 
an  edict  refusing  him  entrance  to  the  country  from 
the  Council  of  Zurich  and  the  assembled  deputies  of 
the  Swiss  Confederates,  and  the  whole  was  crowned  by 
a  Papal  letter  censuring  him  for  misstatements  of  the 
doctrines  of  absolution  and  ordering  him  to  obey  the 
orders  of  the  Pope's  beloved  sons,  the  Swiss  Confeder- 
ates. Such  utterances  brought  to  Zwingli  the  hatred 
of  the  extreme  conservatives,  but  the  love  of  northern 


350  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Switzerland;  and  when  the  report  of  his  death  by 
the  plague  spread  in  the  fall  of  15  19,  he  was  mourned 
in  Basle  as  "  the  hope  of  the  whole  Fatherland," 
"  the  trumpet  of  the  gospel." 

It  was  soon  after  his  recovery  from  this  illness  that 
Zwingli  received  the  writings  of  Luther  which  as- 
serted that  faith  was  not  bound  by  any  human 
authority.  He  was  filled  with  joy  to  find  another 
stating  so  bravely  and  clearly  convictions  to  which 
he  had  himself  arrived,  and  he  wrote  to  Luther, 
calling  him  David  and  Hercules  in  a  breath,  and 
mixing  up  Cacus  and  Goliath  in  the  approved  fashion 
of  an  evangelical  Humanist. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  preacher  of  Zurich  became 
involved  in  direct  opposition  to  the  will  of  Leo.  When 
he  first  went  to  the  city  he  had  desired  to  surrender 
his  small  Papal  pension,  but  the  Legate  had  persuaded 
him  to  keep  it,  on  the  express  condition  that  it  was 
simply  the  present  of  the  Pope,  who  loved  learning, 
to  a  distinguished  scholar,  and  bound  him  in  no  wise 
to  the  suppression  of  opinion.  In  view  of  the  con- 
demnation of  Luther  it  seemed  impossible  to  receive 
it,  and  Zwingli  wrote  to  the  Legate  positively  de- 
clining to  accept  another  payment.  The  next  year 
a  Papal  ambassador  obtained  from  the  Council  of 
Zurich  the  hire  of  a  legion  of  mercenaries.  Zwingli 
instantly  denounced  this  sale  of  lives, which  ought  to  be 
risked  only  in  defence  of  the  Fatherland  to  "the  wolves 
who  eat  men."  "Well  do  these  cardinals  wear  red 
hats  and  mantles,"  he  said,  "  for  if  you  shake  them 
gold  pieces  fall  out,  but  if  you  wring  them  there  runs 
out  the  blood  of  your  sons  and  brothers  and  fathers 


Zurich  Revolts  from  Rome.  351 

and  friends."  And  the  next  year,  horrified  by  a 
narrow  escape  from  a  conflict  between  their  men  and 
another  body  of  Swiss  in  the  army  of  France,  and 
cheated  out  of  their  pay,  the  Council  forbade  foreign 
service  to  all  inhabitants  of  the  canton. 

It  was  soon  after  this  that  Zwingli,  having  in  vain 
sent  in  a  petition  to  the  Bishop,  signed  by  ten  priests, 
asking  to  be  released  from  the  priestly  vow  of  celibacy, 
as  not  required  by  the  gospels  or  practised  by  the 
early  Church,  married  the  widow  of  a  dead  noble- 
man who  lived  near  him.  In  the  middle  of  the 
year  he  published  his  first  attack  upon  the  principle 
of  unlimited  ecclesiastical  authority.  An  attempt 
by  the  monks  to  forbid  Zwingli  from  preaching 
on  certain  topics  and  disturbing  the  opinions  which 
had  the  authority  of  approved  theologians,  resulted 
in  a  resolution  of  the  City  Council  that  the  city  pastor 
must  preach  only  what  was  in  the  Bible  and  pay  no 
attention  to  Duns  Scotus  or  Thomas  Aquinas.  Five 
days  later  the  assembled  clergy  of  the  canton  passed 
unanimously  a  resolution  to  preach  only  what  was  in 
the  Word  of  God.  Then,  in  a  pamphlet  entitled 
"  Beginning  and  End,"  addressed  to  his  Bishop, 
Zwingli  defended  the  liberty  of  preaching  the  Word 
against  all  traditional  authority.  And  he  closed  with 
the  hope  that  "  we  may  unite  as  the  bride  of  Christ, 
without  spot  or  wrinkle,  leaving  the  Church  that  is 
nothing  else  but  spot  and  wrinkle,  because  the  name 
of  God  is  defamed  by  her."  This  was  followed  by 
a  "  Counsel  concerning  the  Message  of  the  Pope  to 
the  Princes  of  Germany,"  in  which  he  besought  them 
not  to  surrender  Luther,  with  whose  destruction  the 


352  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Pope  would  fasten  his  power  upon  Germany  and  the 
whole  world. 

Meanwhile,  at  Paris,  even  the  quiet  Faber  had 
fallen  into  trouble  with  the  orthodox  theologians. 
He  published  in  1518  a  short  treatise  to  prove  that 
Mary,  the  sister  of  Lazarus,  Mary  Magdalene,  and 
the  woman  who  was  a  sinner  were  not  one  and  the 
same  person.  But  the  lessons  appointed  to  be  read 
on  fast-days  implied  that  they  were,  and  he  was  at- 
tacked for  heresy.  On  the  9th  of  November,  1521, 
the  theological  faculty  of  Paris  declared  that  any 
defender  of  Faber's  proposition  was  a  heretic.  And 
a  letter  of  that  fall,  from  a  monk  of  Annecy  to  a 
friend  at  Geneva,  reported  a  conversation  of  Domini- 
can monks,  in  which  they  concluded  that  there  were 
four  Antichrists  in  the  Kingdom  of  Christ — Erasmus, 
Luther,  Reuchlin,  and  Faber.  Meantime  Faber  had 
been  fortunately  called  out  of  the  neighborhood  of 
the  heresy-hunters.  Bri£onnet  invited  him  and 
several  friends  to  reside  at  Meaux,  the  capital  of  his 
diocese,  and  aid  in  his  pastoral  labors  for  the  reform 
of  religion.  Among  those  who  went  with  him  was 
Guillaume  Farel,  who  resigned  his  position  of  professor 
of  philosophy  in  order  to  go.  Confident  in  the 
friendship  and  sympathy  of  the  mother  and  sister  of 
the  King,  and  supported  by  these  scholars,  Briconnet 
began  a  reform  of  the  Church  in  miniature.'  The 
neglected  pulpits  of  the  city  were  regularly  filled,  and 
Faber  began  the  translation  of  the  Bible  into  French. 
The  people  flocked  eagerly  to  the  churches,  but  the 
conservatives  were  filled  with  wrath  to  hear  the  use 
of  holy  water  for  the  dead  denounced,  and  the  doc- 


William  Tyndale.  353 

trine  of  purgatory  rejected  as  resting  only  on  tradi- 
tion and  not  found  in  the  New  Testament.  Farel 
recalled  a  dozen  years  later  how,  on  one  occasion, 
Faber,  pleased  with  the  reception  of  his  new  com- 
mentary on  the  Gospels,  prophesied  in  company  that 
the  Gospel  would  spread  through  all  France  to  repress 
human  tradition,  and  a  certain  monk  named  De  Roma 
answered  him,  "  I  and  the  other  members  of  my  order 
will  preach  a  crusade,  and  drive  the  King  from  his 
kindgom  by  his  own  subjects,  if  he  permits  your 
evangelical  preaching."  And  scarcely  had  the  work 
begun  at  Meaux  before  the  defenders  of  the  faith  at 
Paris  were  taking  steps  to  recall  this  erring  bishop 
from  his  dangerous  paths. 

Meantime,  in  England,  a  man  of  about  the  same 
age  as  Luther  and  Zwingli  was  treading  in  spirit  the 
paths  that  led  to  revolt  from  the  authority  of  the 
Church  and  an  appeal  to  the  New  Testament  as  the 
final  definition  of  religion.  William  Tyndale  wrote  of 
having  been  educated  at  Oxford  in  the  days  when 
"  the  old  barking  curs,  Duns'  disciples,  and  like  draff 
called  Scotists,  the  children  of  darkness,  raged  in 
every  pulpit  against  Greek  and  Latin  and  Hebrew, 
giving  great  sorrow  to  the  schoolmasters  who  taught 
true  Latin ;  some,  beating  the  pulpit  with  their  fists 
for  madness,  and  roaring  out  with  open  and  foaming 
mouth  that  if  there  were  but  one  Terence  or  Virgil 
in  the  world,  and  that  same  in  their  sleeves,  and  a 
fire  before  them,  they  would  burn  it,  though  it  should 
cost  them  their  lives,  affirming  that  all  good  learning 
decayed  and  was  utterly  lost  since  men  gave  them 
unto  the  Latin  tongue."  But  through  Colet  and  the 


354  2^  -Age  of  the  Renascence. 

little  knot  of  Grecians  who  had  just  left  when  Tyn- 
dale  entered  he  somehow  received  the  seed  of  the 
New  Learning.  From  Oxford  he  went  to  Cambridge, 
where  he  may  have  heard  Erasmus,  and  probably 
fell  in  with  a  student  named  Bilney,  who  has  recorded 
that  he  formed  the  views  for  which  he  died  at  the 
stake  by  reading  the  New  Testament  of  Erasmus  soon 
after  its  publication.  About  1521  Tyndale  left  the 
University  an  ordained  priest,  to  act  as  chaplain  to 
"  Sir  John  Walsh,  a  knight  of  Gloucestershire."  The 
manor  church  of  Little  Foxbury  was  under  an  Italian 
bishop  who  had  never  been  inside  his  diocese.  The 
clergy  were  therefore  more  given  to  comfortable 
orthodoxy  than  to  work,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
at  suppers  in  the  hall  of  the  manor  this  man  of  the 
New  Learning  became  involved  in  debates  with  them. 
It  being  objected  by  Madam  Walsh  that  those 
who  differed  with  him  were  great  beneficed  clergy, 
spending  from  one  to  three  hundred  pounds  a  year, 
and  that  it  did  not  stand  to  reason  that  a  poor  clerk 
like  himself,  however  well  he  might  argue,  could 
really  be  right  in  opposing  the  authority  of  such 
dignitaries,  Tyndale  was  put  upon  some  other 
means  of  quieting  the  conscience  of  his  worthy  host- 
ess. And  he  bethought  him  of  translating  the 
"  Enchiridion  "  of  Erasmus,  which  he  presented  to 
her  in  English  as  the  work  of  a  man  high  in  favor 
with  the  Archbishop  and  King  of  England.  This 
seems  to  have  maintained  his  standing  in  the  manor, 
and  he  was  able  to  free  himself  from  a  charge  of 
heresy  brought  against  him  by  neighboring  clergy- 
men before  the  Chancellor  of  the  diocese. 


Tyndale  Translating  the  Bible.       355 

These  troubles,  which  he  perceived  grew  out  of  the 
ignorance  of  his  accusers,  suggested  to  him  the  idea  of 
translating  the  Bible,  not,  as  Wiclif  had  done,  from 
the  Vulgate,  but  from  the  original  text.  It  is  re- 
ported that  when  a  certain  disputant  said  to  him, 
about  this  time,  "  It  were  better  to  be  without  God's 
laws  than  the  Pope's,"  Tyndale  answered,  "  I  defy 
the  Pope  and  all  his  laws."  And  then  added, 
quoting  Erasmus,  "  If  God  spare  me,  ere  many  years 
I  will  cause  that  the  boy  who  driveth  the  plough 
shall  know  more  of  Scripture  than  thou."  Such 
utterances  soon  made  the  country-side  dangerous  for 
him,  and  Tyndale  went  to  London  in  the  summer  of 
1523,  hoping  to  obtain  for  his  translation  of  the  New 
Testament  the  patronage  of  Tunstal,  the  young  Bish- 
op, a  friend  of  More  and  Erasmus.  But  Tunstal 
received  him  coldly,  and  despairing  of  obtaining  the 
episcopal  sanction,  without  which  his  translation  could 
not  be  printed  in  England,  he  sailed  in  the  spring  oi 
1524  for  Hamburg. 


PERIOD   III. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

ADRIAN  VI.,  THE  HONEST  ORTHODOX  ECCLESIAS- 
TIC— THE  OLDER  HUMANISTS  OF  THE  NORTH 
STAND  BY  THE  CHURCH — THE  YOUNGER  AP- 
PEAL TO  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT — CLEMENT 
VII.,  THE  HEIR  OF  THE  MEDICI. 

j|N  the  ist  of  December,  1521,  Leo  died 
suddenly,  of  malarial  fever,  in  the  midst 
of  the  triumph  of  his  politics,  having  just 
received  the  news  that  of  all  Italy  only 
Genoa  still  held  to  France.  The  first 
thought  of  the  conclave  of  cardinals  was  for  the 
privileges  of  their  order  and  the  patronage  of  the 
new  pontificate.  An  agreement  was  drawn  up,  that 
no  cardinal  might  be  arrested  without  a  two-thirds 
vote  of  his  peers ;  that  their  property  should  be  free 
from  tax ;  that  every  cardinal  having  less  than  six 
thousand  florins  a  year  should  receive  two  hundred 
a  month  from  a  tax  levied  upon  the  cloisters;  and 
that  the  offices  of  the  cities  of  the  patrimonium 
should  be  divided  according  to  a  detailed  schedule 
among  the  cardinals.  All  having  signed  the  agree- 
ment, they  proceeded  to  election. 

It  was  difficult.     England,  France,  and  Spain  had 
356 


A  Reforming  Pope.  357 

their  part  in  the  struggle,  the  great  nepots  were 
working  each  for  his  own  hand,  the  "  younger " 
cardinals  were  united  in  common  jealousy  of  the 
"  older,"  and  the  better  men  were  disgusted  with 
the  whole  situation.  When,  for  instance,  Cardinals 
Farnese,  Ancona,  and  Grassi  offered  the  tiara  to 
Zwingli's  old  friend,  the  Cardinal  of  Sion,  he  an- 
swered, "  I  do  not  want  to  be  Pope,  but  I  will  vote 
for  no  Pope  that  has  a  wife  " — a  threat  that  silenced 
the  three  politicians.  In  the  midst  of  a  frightful 
wrangle,  the  Cardinal  Medici,  pointing  out  that  after 
so  many  failures  it  was  manifest  that  no  one  present 
could  be  elected,  nominated  the  absent  Cardinal  of 
Tortosa,  Hadrian  Dedel.  The  conclave  stampeded, 
and,  to  their  own  astonishment,  unanimously  elected 
the  former  tutor  of  Charles  V.  The  world  was  filled 
with  amazement  that  one  with  no  hand  in  Roman 
politics,  known  for  his  theological  learning  of  the  old 
school  and  his  ascetic  life,  should  have  been  made 
Pope.  Everywhere  the  election  was  hailed  with  joy 
by  men  who  hoped  for  the  conservative  reform  of 
the  Church.  But  in  Rome  there  was  mourning. 
The  people  were  enraged  at  the  choice  of  a  "  bar- 
barian," and  the  cardinals  could  not  forgive  them- 
selves for  electing  one  who  had  not  signed  the 
agreement  concerning  patronage  and  privileges.  As 
they  came  from  the  conclave  one  by  one,  a  howling 
mob  led  them  to  their  palaces ;  and  when  he  reached 
his  door  the  Cardinal  of  Mantua  bowed  politely  and 
thanked  them  for  having  used  only  words  instead  of 
stones  against  one  who  had  been  guilty  of  such  a 
stupidity.  A  deep  gloom  settled  upon  the  Papal 


358  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

court  as  the  four  thousand  officials  of  Leo,  who  had 
paid  big  prices  for  their  offices,  looked  forward  to  the 
coming  of  this  strict  churchman  from  the  barbarous 
north. 

When  the  Pope  (Adrian  VI.)  arrived  in  the  city, 
August  3 1,  1522,  he  found  that  he  had  a  difficult  task 
before  him.  The  extravagance  of  Leo  had  left  the  trea- 
sury so  empty  that  the  cardinals  had  to  pawn  the 
tapestries  of  Raphael  and  the  silver  statues  out  of  the 
Sistine  Chapel  to  raise  funds  for  the  journey  of  the 
Legates  who  informed  him  of  his  election, and  the  mass 
of  Leo's  debts,  at  huge  interest,  was  an  almost  ruinous 
burden  upon  the  income  of  the  Church.  Rome  was 
also  in  a  frightful  state  of  disorder.  The  Duke  of 
Camerino  had  been  murdered  just  outside  the  gates, 
and  a  few  weeks  before  two  bravos  had  been  exe- 
cuted who  were  accounted  guilty  of  one  hundred 
and  sixteen  assassinations.  To  bring  order  out  of 
this  chaos  Adrian  depended  on  Spain.  He  came  into 
the  city  guarded  by  Spanish  troops  and  accompanied 
by  Spaniards  and  Flemings  to  fill  the  household 
offices  of  the  Vatican  and  be  his  counsellors.  The 
luxurious  life  of  Leo  ceased  instantly.  Adrian's  old 
housekeeper  took  charge  of  the  cooking,  and  the 
Papal  table  expenses  were  at  once  cut  down  to  a 
florin  a  day,  which  he  took  every  night  out  of  his 
own  purse.  The  palefreniers  (grooms  to  lead  the 
horses)  were  reduced  in  number  from  one  hundred 
to  ten.  Two  French  chamberlains  and  two  Spanish 
pages  completed  the  household.  The  Pope's  first 
speech  in  conclave  was  ominous  to  the  splendid 
cardinals  of  Leo.  Its  refrain  was  reform  of  the  open 


Adrian's  Tasks.  359 

and  great  scandals  in  the  Curia,  of  which  all  the  world 
spoke.  Such  economy  made  the  Romans,  whose 
trade  had  flourished  on  the  luxury  of  Leo,  hate  the 
ascetic  and  taciturn  foreigner;  and  his  speech  set 
every  cardinal  who  loved  the  politics  and  patronage 
of  the  ecclesiastical  machine  entirely  against  the  re- 
former. 

Four  things  claimed  Adrian's  attention :  the  reform 
of  the  Curia,  the  heresy  in  Germany,  the  crusade 
against  the  Turks,  and  the  rivalry  of  Francis  and 
Charles,  which  threatened  to  fill  Italy  and  the  world 
with  war.  His  papers  were  carried  to  the  Nether- 
lands after  his  death  and  lost;  but  from  what  we 
know  of  his  intentions  he  tried  to  manage  all  of  these 
like  an  honest  churchman,  an  old-school  theologian, 
and  a  loyal  Spaniard.  He  would  gladly  have  taken 
up  reform  first,  and  he  believed  that  the  clergy  ought 
to  receive  from  the  Church  incomes  only  living  ex- 
penses and  clothes ;  but  a  short  time  convinced  him 
that,  with  the  debts  of  Leo  to  handle  and  a  hostile 
College  of  Cardinals,  he  must  go  slowly.  And  the 
other  matters  pressed. 

In  Germany  he  was  disposed  to  make  every  con- 
cession consistent  with  his  ultra-orthodoxy.  The 
abuses  connected  with  the  sale  of  indulgences  were 
open,  and  admitted  even  by  those  who  accepted  the 
principle  of  them.  Ximenes  had  limited  the  sale  in 
Spain,  and  even  the  cardinals  had  agreed  before  the 
election  that  the  privilege  of  selling  should  be  taken 
from  the  Franciscan  friars.  No  one  recognized  the 
abuses  which  had  gathered  round  the  Roman  institu- 
tions better  than  Adrian.  To  the  complaints  which 


360  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

came  from  the  German  Reichstag  at  Nuremberg  he 
sent  an  answer  confessing  the  great  sins  of  the  Papacy, 
promising  reform,  and  urging  the  princes  to  let  Luther 
be  dealt  with  according  to  the  ban  which  had  declared 
him  guilty  of  death.  The  Reichstag's  answer  hailed 
with  joy  the  promises  of  the  Pope  to  reform  the 
Church  and  to  unite  Christendom  against  the  Turk, 
regretted  the  discussions  aroused  by  Luther,  but  said 
that  nothing  but  civil  war  could  enforce  the  ban  of 
the  Empire  upon  him.  It  suggested  that,  under  the 
circumstances,  a  General  Council  of  the  Church 
should  be  called  in  Germany,  where  every  delegate 
might  speak  his  opinion  without  fear  or  favor.  This 
answer  meant  a  deadlock,  for  it  seemed  to  Adrian 
that  there  remained  nothing  for  a  Council  to  adjudi- 
cate. 

Scarcely  had  Adrian  been  inaugurated  before 
Charles  began  to  foreclose  the  mortgage  on  the  Pa- 
pacy which  his  ready  support  of  his  old  tutor  gave 
him,  and  his  demands  showed  that  there  had  been 
some  reason  in  the  thought  of  those  who  feared,  be- 
fore Adrian  started  for  Rome,  that  the  Church  was 
threatened  with  a  Spanish  Babylonian  Captivity. 
He  demanded  twenty-eight  concessions.  They  in- 
cluded the  grant  of  large  parts  of  the  regular  income 
of  the  Spanish  Church,  the  use  for  the  defence  of  his 
Moorish  conquests  of  all  the  money  raised  in  Spain 
for  the  crusade,  the  management  of  the  three  great 
Spanish  orders  of  Spiritual  Knights,  and  such  other 
changes  in  patronage  as  made  the  crown  absolute 
master  of  the  Spanish  Church.  In  addition  he  asked 
that  the  Pope  should  censure  all  who  went  to  the 


A  driaris  Death.  361 

great  fair  at  Lyons,  because  Julius  and  Leo  had 
ordered  it  removed  to  Genoa  with  the  purpose  of 
weakening  the  trade  of  France.  Finally  he  demanded 
that  the  Pope  should  join  the  league  of  England, 
Venice,  and  Spain  against  France.  To  be  able  to 
support  these  demands  intelligently,  his  ambassador 
filled  the  Vatican  with  spies ;  and  so  successful  was 
his  bribery  that  every  word  spoken  in  the  secret 
counsels  of  the  Church  was  reported  to  him.  Against 
this  claim  Adrian  stood  out  long,  in  the  vain  hope 
that  he  might  preserve  the  peace  of  Europe  and  unite 
France  and  Spain  against  the  Turk.  Sultan  Selim  in 
his  will  had  left  to  his  son  the  duty  of  taking  first 
Belgrade  and  then  the  island  of  Rhodes,  and  from 
these  points  of  departure  on  land  and  sea,  of  finishing 
the  conquest  of  Europe.  Belgrade  fell  in  1521,  the 
first  year  of  his  reign.  And  after  a  heroic  defence 
of  eight  months  by  the  Knights  Hospitallers,  the 
Janizaries  entered  Rhodes  on  Christmas  day,  1522. 
A  few  months  later,  despairing  of  making  peace 
between  the  three  young  kings  thirsty  for  glory, 
Adrian  entered  into  the  league  to  defend  Italy  against 
the  invasion  of  Francis.  Then,  on  the  i/j-th  of  Sep- 
tember, having  seen  the  Turk  capture  the  outer  bul- 
warks of  Christendom  on  land  and  sea,  he  died  amid 
the  clash  of  arms  between  the  Defender  of  the  Faith, 
the  most  Catholic  King,  and  the  most  Christian  King. 
The  cardinals  pressed  into  his  room  as  he  lay  dying 
and  roughly  demanded  the  key  to  his  treasure-room. 
But  they  found  only  a  few  silver  pieces,  some  rings 
of  Leo's,  and  several  hundred  florins ;  for  Adrian  had 
been  penurious,  not  for  himself,  but  for  the  Church. 


362  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Rome  rose  in  joy  at  the  new<5  of  the  death  of  a  Pope 
who  was  too  good,  even  as  they  had  rejoiced  before 
at  the  death  of  one  who  was  too  bad.  The  wits 
crowned  the  doors  of  the  honest  old  man's  physician 
with  laurel  and  the  inscription,  "  To  the  Liberator  of 
the  Fatherland,  from  the  Senate  and  People  of  Rome." 
But  the  election  of  Adrian,  though  it  did  not  reform 
the  Curia,  was  at  least  of  service  to  the  Church  in 
hastening  the  break  between  the  Older  Humanists 
and  the  men  of  the  radical  reform.  At  his  first  pro- 
test the  Humanists  of  Germany  had  stood  by  Luther 
almost  to  a  man ;  but  when  Luther  revolted  entirely 
from  the  Papacy,  and  began  to  defend  himself  from 
the  stake  and  his  cause  from  extinction  by  war  to 
the  knife,  one  by  one  the  Older  Humanists — all  the 
men  whom  we  have  mentioned  in  that  class  and  many 
more — fell  away  from  him.  But  their  successors  of 
the  next  generation  were  more  unanimous  in  stand- 
ing by  the  protest  that  grew  to  revolt  than  their 
fathers  in  abandoning  it.  Reuchlin  died  shortly  after 
the  election  of  Adrian,  having  tried  in  vain  to  prevent 
his  nephew,  Melancthon,  from  making  close  friends 
with  Luther,  but  his  younger  brother  became  a  firm 
Lutheran.  None  hailed  the  election  of  Adrian  with 
more  joy  than  Erasmus.  "  We  have  a  theologian 
for  Pope,"  he  wrote  to  Zwingli,  "  and  we  shall  soon 
see  a  turn  in  the  Christian  cause " ;  and  soon 
afterward,  in  answer  to  Adrian's  request,  he  was 
sending  to  Rome  his  counsel  on  the  situation  of  the 
Church  and  the  German  schism.  In  February,  1523, 
he  wrote  one  of  his  private  letters,  which  became  the 
property  of  the  world,  to  explain  that  he  had  nothing 


The  Bible  for  the  People.  363 

to  do  with  Luther.  He  had  already  broken  with 
Zwingli,  and  within  two  years  he  was  at  sword's 
points  with  both  the  reformers. 

But  the  men  of  the  radical  reform  had  by  that  time 
gone  too  far  to  care  for  lukewarm  adherents.  In 
France,  in  Germany,  in  Switzerland,  even  in  England, 
the  line  had  been  drawn,  and  the  world  was  asked 
to  choose  between  the  Christian  institutions  which 
had  grown  into  authority  by  tradition  and  custom, 
and  the  record  of  the  origins  of  Christianity  as  inter- 
preted by  reason  and  the  conscience. 

In  January,  1523,  Zwingli  defended,  in  a  public 
disputation  before  the  great  Council  of  Zurich,  sixty- 
seven  theses,  of  which  the  first  was :  "  All  who  say 
that  the  Gospel  is  nothing  without  the  authentication 
of  the  Church  err  and  revile  God."  And  at  the  con- 
clusion the  Council  ordered  that,  "  as  no  heresy  had 
been  proved,  he  and  the  other  preachers  of  Zurich 
should  continue  to  proclaim  the  true  divine  Scripture 
according  to  the  Spirit  of  God." 

Already  Luther  had  issued  the  New  Testament  in 
a  translation  readable  by  North  Germans  and  South 
Germans — the  first  great  monument  of  their  common 
speech  and  the  foundation  of  a  new  literature.  In 
the  fall  of  the  following  year,  1523,  the  New  Testa- 
ment appeared  in  French  from  the  pen  of  Faber 
Stapulensis,  and  in  the  fall  of  1525  Tyndale  printed 
at  Worms  six  thousand  copies  of  his  English  New 
Testament.  Thus  in  the  three  chief  transalpine 
tongues  the  appeal  was  made  to  the  individual  reason 
and  conscience  to  test  the  Roman  authority  by  the 
record  of  the  origins  of  Christianity.  The  result 


364  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

among  each  of  these  three  peoples  was  schism  and 
revolt,  leading  to  a  century  of  religious  war  which 
convulsed  all  Europe. 

In  this  great  conflict  Spain  was  to  be  the  champion 
of  the  Papacy,  ever  striving  to  maintain  or  reestablish 
its  authority.  But  the  able  and  pious  youth  of 
twenty-three  who  was  King  of  Spain  and  Emperor 
of  Germany  at  the  death  of  Adrian  did  not  realize  at 
first  the  greatness  of  the  spiritual  force  which  was  to 
destroy  the  power  of  the  Papacy  over  half  Europe. 
His  attention  was  concentrated  upon  the  prospects  of 
a  new  and  desperate  struggle  with  his  rival,  the  King 
of  France,  for  the  possession  of  North  Italy.  It 
seemed  to  him  of  the  greatest  importance,  therefore, 
to  have  not  only  a  good  Pope,  but  a  Pope  friendly 
to  Spain ;  and  at  the  end  of  fifty  days  of  conclave, 
when  Giulio  de  Medici  was  elected  and  took  the  title 
of  Clement  VII.,  his  ambassador  wrote,  "  Medici  is 
your  creature." 

The  new  Pope,  though  without  any  of  Adrian's 
ascetic  tendencies,  led  a  very  strict  life.  The  Vatican 
was  ruled  by  the  utmost  ecclesiastical  decorum,  and 
the  Pope's  musical  taste  was  chiefly  indulged  in  im- 
proving the  ceremonies  of  the  Church.  He  also 
listened  gladly  to  learned  discussions  at  table  upon 
theology  or  philosophy.  He  kept  himself  from 
simony  and  was  just  and  punctual  in  fulfilling  his 
promises.  His  long  experience  in  ecclesiastical  affairs 
made  all  men  who  thought  that  diplomacy  could  save 
the  Church  expect  great  things  of  his  pontificate. 
For  it  was  only  after  he  had  obtained  power  that  he 
displayed  the  curious  mixture  of  obstinacy  and  lack 


The  Wisdom  that  Became  Foolishness.  365 

of  self-reliance  which  was  in  him.  It  was  the  mis- 
fortune of  Clement  to  have  been  trained  in  an  arti- 
ficial school  and  then  plunged  into  a  field  of  action 
where  primal  passions  of  the  soul  were  at  work. 
The  maxims  of  the  politics  of  Machiavelli  were  made 
for  a  world  where  men  were  moved  chiefly  by  ap- 
petites and  the  secondary  considerations  of  a  highly 
artificial  system.  Around  Clement  were  moving  the 
forces  of  national  hatred  and  patriotic  pride,  the  love 
of  religious  freedom,  and  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice 
for  venerable  institutions.  What  wonder,  then,  that 
his  wisdom  was  worse  than  ignorance  and  his  trained 
cleverness  the  most  fatal  blundering? 


PERIOD    III. 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THE  SACK   OF  ROME. 

|HE  war  between  the  League  and  France 
was  pushed  with  vigor,  and  in  May,  1524, 
the  French  General  was  driven  across  the 
Alps.  To  this  victory  the  Pope,  in  spite 
of  the  pressure  of  the  Spanish  ambassador, 
contributed  little,  because  he  did  not  wish  it  to  be 
too  complete.  The  Papacy  had  erected  the  French 
kingdom  of  Sicily  to  prevent  North  and  South  Italy 
being  in  the  hands  of  one  power,  which  would  then 
be  too  strong  for  it.  By  the  same  policy  it  had 
gladly  seen  the  kingdom  of  Naples  pass  to  Spain. 
If  now  Charles,  Emperor  and  King  of  Spain,  was  to 
rule  in  Naples  and  Milan,  would  it  not  be  at  the  cost 
of  that  political  independence  of  the  Papal  States 
which  for  fifty  years  had  been  the  chief  aim  of  all 
Popes  except  the  barbarian  Adrian?  So  Clement 
gave  but  little  aid,  and  secretly  urged  Venice  to  follow 
his  example.  Then,  filled  with  fright  at  the  triumph 
of  the  Emperor,  he  turned  to  him  with  expressions 
of  loyalty  and  demands  for  a  share  in  the  conquests. 
But  when  Francis  crossed  tfte  Alps  the  next  year 
with  the  most  powerful  army  of  the  generation,  fifty 

366 


Intrigues.  367 

thousand  men,  the  Pope  closed  a  secret  treaty  with 
him  and  Venice.  All  in  vain;  for  in  the  frightful 
defeat  of  Pavia  the  army  of  France  was  destroyed  and 
the  King  taken  prisoner.  A  month  later  Clement 
entered  again  into  alliance  with  the  Emperor,  agree- 
ing to  join  in  the  defence  of  Milan  against  every 
assailant.  But  scarcely  was  the  King  of  France  back 
in  his  kingdom  before  Clement  was  active  in  favoring 
the  League  of  Cognac,  in  which  the  Pope,  England, 
Florence,  and  Venice  joined  to  support  Francis  in 
breaking  the  oaths  by  which  he  had  secured  his  re- 
lease from  prison. 

The  Emperor  made  every  effort  to  withdraw  the 
Pope  from  the  League ;  offered  to  give  up  Milan  if 
Clement  and  the  Italian  states  would  pay  the  costs 
of  conquering  it.  He  even  offered  to  leave  all  ques- 
tions which  could  not  be  agreed  on  by  treaty  to  the 
decision  of  the  Pope.  But  Clement  was  now  bent  on 
war,  for  he  had  heard  that  the  position  of  the  Spanish 
army  was  desperate.  They  were  living  in  a  wasted 
and  hostile  country  without  any  line  of  communica- 
tion, and  serving  a  crown  which,  with  all  its  wealth, 
was  in  a  chronic  state  of  bankruptcy.  It  seemed  to 
the  weak  obstinacy  of  Clement  a  good  time  to  bring 
pressure  to  bear  on  the  Emperor.  So  the  imperial 
ambassador  left  the  Vatican  with  threats  and  sar- 
casms, and  the  Emperor  fell  back  on  the  ancient 
plan  of  raising  insurrection  in  the  Papal  States. 

Cardinal  Pompeo  Colonna,  with  his  brothers  and 
relations,  descendants  of  the  old  Ghibelline  nobility, 
collected  four  thousand  men  and  suddenly  fell  on 
Rome  to  seize  the  Pope.  With  them  came  the 


368  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Spanish  ambassador.  The  herald  proclaimed,  as  they 
rode  without  a  shot  into  the  heart  of  Rome,  that  no 
one  need  'fear,  for  the  Colonna  were  only  come  to 
free  Rome  from  the  tyranny  of  an  avaricious  Pope. 
Clement  proposed  to  meet  them  on  the  throne  like 
Boniface,  but  was  persuaded  without  much  difficulty 
to  take  refuge  in  the  castle  of  San  Angelo.  Co- 
lonna's  men  plundered  St.  Peter's  and  the  Vatican, 
making  a  booty  reckoned  at  three  hundred  thousand 
florins.  The  castle  was  unprovisioned  for  a  siege, 
and  the  Pope  sent  for  the  Spanish  minister  to  make 
terms.  He  threw  himself  at  Clement's  feet,  and,  ex- 
pressing his  regret  for  the  plundering,  gave  back  the 
staff  and  tiara.  There  was  nothing  for  Clement  to 
do  but  to  grant  all  that  was  asked,  which  he  promptly 
did,  but  without  the  smallest  intention  of  keeping  his 
word ;  and  with  full  absolution  the  Colonna  retreated. 
Meantime  Charles  had  slackened  much  in  his  efforts 
to  suppress  the  Lutheran  heresy;  for  he  was  finding 
out  the  wisdom  of  that  ambassador  who  wrote  from 
Rome,  in  1520,  that  he  should  show  some  favor 
secretly  to  a  certain  monk  Martin,  for  he  might  be 
useful  in  case  the  Pope  refused  to  join  the  anti-French 
alliance  or  threatened  to  withdraw  from  it.  And 
when  the  Reichstag  at  Speyer,  in  the  summer  of 
1526,  demanded  a  General  Council  of  the  Church, 
and  meanwhile  left  it  to  each  prince  and  city  "  to  act 
in  regard  to  the  Edict  of  Worms  [which  ordered  the 
surrender  of  Luther  and  the  suppression  of  heresy] 
as  he  hoped  and  trusted  to  answer  to  God  and  the 
Emperor,"  Charles  probably  did  not  mourn  very 
much  at  this  disobedience  to  the  sentence  of  the 


The  Pious  Landsknechts.  369 

Church  and  the  ban  of  the  Empire.  At  all  events 
he  had  neither  leisure  nor  means  to  divert  from  his 
contest  with  Francis  and  his  ally,  the  Pope.  And  so 
the  German  Reformation  gained  time  to  develop  the 
strength  which  enabled  it  a  few  years  later  to  defend 
its  life  on  the  field  of  battle  against  Church  and 
Empire. 

Within  a  month  the  Pope  had  broken  the  forced 
convention,  excommunicated  Colonna  and  all  his 
house,  and  put  an  army  in  the  field  against  him. 
Meantime  from  two  sides  the  Emperor  was  strength- 
ening his  force  in  Italy.  A  fleet  landed  seven  thou- 
sand Spaniards  on  the  coast  of  Tuscany,  and  in  the 
north,  Georg  von  Frundsberg,  organizer  of  the 
German  professional  soldiers,  was  raising  an  army. 
These  mercenaries,  whose  fame  was  now  beginning 
to  surpass  that  of  the  Swiss,  were  called  the  pious 
Landsknechts,  though  it  is  difficult  to  see  why.  The 
original  members  of  these  bands  had  been  military 
retainers  of  the  knights  whose  employment  was  lost 
by  the  decay  of  the  feudal  system.  They  had  de- 
veloped a  loose  organization,  bound  by  unwritten 
laws,  undisciplined,  but  with  great  powers  of  cohe- 
sion. However  much  they  might  quarrel  among 
themselves,  they  stood  in  thick  phalanx,  bristling 
with  eighteen-foot  spears,  against  all  outside  inter- 
ference. Their  rough  affection  had  nicknamed 
Frundsberg  "  the  father  of  all  Landsknechts,"  and  he 
had  little  difficulty  in  raising  among  the  mountains 
of  Tyrol  and  South  Germany  thirty-five  companies, 
amounting  to  twelve  thousand  men.  The  necessary 
funds  he  got  by  mortgaging  his  own  estates  for 


370  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

thirty-eight  thousand  florins.  For  future  pay  he 
trusted  to  the  Emperor  or  to  plunder.  They  were 
a  band  of  wild  veterans,  commanded  by  tried  captains 
of  the  lesser  nobility  who  had  won  fame  and  skill  in 
the  ceaseless  wars  of  a  lifetime,  and,  from  the  ranks 
to  the  General,  hatred  of  the  Pope  was  almost  as 
strong  as  love  of  plunder.  With  forced  marches 
Frundsberg  hurried  this  army  over  the  Alps  by 
untrodden  paths,  his  men  hauling  the  stout  old 
General  up  the  rocks  with  their  long  spears,  while 
their  comrades  took  turns  in  shoving  behind.  He 
had  neither  horses,  provisions,  artillery,  nor  money ; 
but  he  struck  off  boldly  into  the  valley  of  the  Po,  and, 
fighting  his  way  through  the  Papal  mercenaries, 
scarcely  touched  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  rich  and 
thickly  populated  states  he  traversed,  safely  formed 
a  junction  with  the  garrison  of  Milan,  which  put  the 
Duke  of  Bourbon,  its  commander,  at  the  head  of 
thirty  thousand  men.  He  held  the  roads  to  Rome 
and  Florence,  threatening  to  pour  his  army,  mad- 
dened by  lack  of  pay  and  long-whetted  appetite  for 
plunder,  now  on  one  city,  now  on  the  other. 

Then  Clement  tried  to  make  peace.  It  did  not 
seem  a  desperate  situation.  The  League  had  thirty 
thousand  men  in  the  field.  The  Spanish  army  was 
penniless,  cold,  and  starving.  Long  stretches  of 
hostile  country  lay  between  them  and  the  strong 
walls  of  Rome ;  the  burgher  militia  of  the  city  was 
fourteen  thousand  strong;  it  was  still  possible  to 
squeeze  money  out  of  the  resources  of  the  Church ; 
and  Italy  hated  the  Spaniard  as  she  hated  the 
Frenchman.  If  Clement  had  seen  the  real  forces  in 
his  own  chosen  game  of  politics  he  might  at  least 


The  Threatening  Cloud.  371 

have  lost  with  honor ;  but  he  was  one  of  those  poli- 
ticians who  always  try  to  evade  realities  in  the  hope 
that  something  will  turn  up.  Five  days  he  remained 
undecided  between  the  ambassador  of  France  and 
Spain.  Then  he  agreed  to  a  truce. 

The  news  was  received  in  the  army  of  Bourbon 
with  indescribable  wrath.  The  soldiers,  cheated  of 
the  prospect  of  plunder  which  alone  had  made  them 
bear  their  desperate  hardships  and  total  lack  of  pay, 
rose  in  mutiny.  The  Spaniards  sacked  the  quarters 
of  the  Duke  of  Bourbon,  and  threw  the  golden  tabard 
with  his  coat  of  arms  into  the  ditch.  Meantime  he 
had  taken  refuge  with  Frundsberg  and  was  hidden  in 
a  stall  of  the  stable.  Three  days  later  it  was  the 
turn  of  the  Landsknechts  to  mutiny.  Frundsberg 
assembled  them  by  beat  of  drum  into  a  great  ring, 
and  stood  in  the  centre  to  speak  to  them.  He  bade 
them  have  patience  for  a  month.  They  answered 
with  shouts  of  "Gold!  Gold!  "  and  lowered  their 
spear-points  against  him.  The  insult  broke  the  old 
soldier's  heart.  He  staggered  and  would  have  fallen, 
but  they  caught  him  and  helped  him  to  a  seat  on  a 
drum,  while  the  wrath  of  the  men  quickly  melted  to 
pity.  They  laid  him  across  the  ass  on  which  he  rode 
during  the  march,  and  brought  him  to  an  inn  near 
by,  but  Georg  von  Frundsberg  was  done.  A  year 
later  they  got  the  paralyzed  veteran  across  the  Alps 
to  his  mortgaged  castle  of  Mindelheim,  and  he  died 
in  a  week. 

The  wild  mass  of  fighting  men,  as  frightful  in  peace 
as  in  war,  was  left,  half  starved  and  unpaid,  with  no 
leader  who  could  control  them  except  in  battle. 
Rome  was  their  goal ;  for  in  Rome  lay  the  enemy  of 


372  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Germany,  the  insulter  of  the  Spanish  King,  the  Pope ; 
and  in  Rome  were  the  wines  and  the  women,  the 
gold  and  jewels,  the  silks  and  satins  which  would 
make  up  for  all  hardships  and  replace  their  lost  pay. 
It  was  a  force  that  was  not  to  be  played  with  for  an 
instant.  It  must  be  bought  off  and  turned  back  to 
the  north,  or  fought  desperately  like  a  herd  of  wild 
beasts.  Poor  Clement  did  neither.  Two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  florins  would  have  paid  the  first 
instalment  of  the  men's  wages  and  halted  them.  He 
was  unwilling  to  raise  it;  and  having  made  a  truce 
with  the  Spanish  Vice-King  of  Naples,  he  dismissed 
four  thousand  mercenaries,  and  sent  a  message  to 
the  army  of  Bourbon  to  offer  sixty  thousand  florins 
if  they  would  retreat.  The  generals  ordered  the 
captains  to  ask  the  men  if  they  were  willing.  The 
Spanish  regiments  made  answer  that  they  were  deeply 
laden  with  sins  and  must  go  to  Rome  to  get  absolu- 
tion, and  finally  Germans  and  Spaniards  bound 
themselves  by  an  oath  not  to  intermit  the  march. 
Bourbon  sent  word  to  the  Pope  and  the  Vice-King 
that  he  was  helpless  in  the  hands  of  his  men,  and 
came  on  toward  Rome.  Then,  too  late,  the  Pope 
found  a  desperate  courage,  entered  once  more  into 
league  with  France,  England,  and  Venice,  and  made 
efforts  to  arm  the  Romans  and  raise  mercenaries. 
He  filled  the  city  with  tardy  energy  and  Italy  with 
futile  appeals  for  aid. 

And  that  ragged  and  hungry  host  rolled  steadily 
along,  eating  unripe  fruit  by  the  wayside,  plundering 
and  burning  every  city  which  did  not  feed  them. 
On  the  4th  of  May  Clement  proclaimed  a  crusade 


The  Storming  of  Rome.  373 

against  them  as  Lutherans  and  heretics,  and  on  the 
next  day,  forty  thousand  strong,  they  pitched  their 
camp  before  Rome.  Their  situation  was  desperate. 
They  had  made  the  country  behind  a  desert,  they 
were  in  the  direst  want,  the  walls  were  strong,  the 
city  was  capable  of  putting  fourteen  thousand  fight- 
ing men  in  the  field,  and  the  army  of  the  League  was 
gathering  to  fall  on  their  rear.  It  was  with  the  mind 
of  one  who  dared  not  fail  that  Bourbon  marshalled  the 
men  at  midnight.  At  daybreak,  without  artillery  or 
proper  scaling-ladders,  they  made  the  assault.  The 
first  rush  failed,  and  the  Landsknechts  lost  six  ban- 
ners. Then  Bourbon  sprang  from  his  horse,  and 
seizing  a  ladder  made  of  vineyard  staves,  started  to 
mount.  A  ball  struck  him,  and  with  the  cry,  "  Our 
Lady!  I  am  dead,"  he  fell.  The  news  only  roused 
the  fury  of  his  men.  In  another  wild  assault  Span- 
iards and  Germans  planted  their  flags  on  top  of  the 
wall  in  two  places  at  the  same  moment,  and  a  desper- 
ate massacre  began.  A  company  of  Roman  militia 
lost  nine  hundred  out  of  a  thousand.  The  Swiss 
guard  of  the  Pope  perished  almost  to  a  man ;  and  a 
maddened  band  of  Spaniards  even  broke  into  the 
hospital  of  San  Spirito  and  massacred  the  patients. 
The  Pope  was  saying  mass  in  St.  Peter's  when  some 
fleeing  Swiss  rushed  in  at  the  great  doors,  with  the 
killers  hard  after  them.  The  attendants  hurried  him 
by  the  covered  passage  toward  the  castle  of  San 
Angelo,  and  the  cries  of  his  guardsmen  cut  down  at 
the  high  altar  pursued  him.  The  portcullis  of  the 
castle  fell  upon  the  stream  of  fugitives,  and  two 
cardinals  were  afterward  drawn  up  in  baskets.  Mean- 


3  74  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

while  Bourbon  had  died  in  the  church  of  Campo 
Santo,  crying  in  his  last  delirium,  "To  Rome!  To 
Rome!"  That  frightful  army  was  loose  in  the  Eter- 
nal City,  with  no  one  who  could  hold  it  in  check  for 
a  moment. 

According  to  the  laws  of  war  which  remained  un- 
questioned for  generations  later,  a  city  taken  by 
assault  belonged  to  the  soldiers.  They  could  hold 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  it  to  ransom,  or,  if 
they  chose,  put  them  to  the  sword.  And  when,  the 
next  day,  the  army,  which  with  all  its  disorganization 
was  still  a  frightful  fighting-machine,  passed  from  the 
Leonina  over  the  walls  of  the  city  proper,  a  sack 
began  more  pitiless  than  that  of  Alaric  and  the  Goths. 
At  the  end  of  three  days  the  Prince  of  Orange,  now 
ostensibly  in  command,  ordered  plundering  to  cease. 
But  the  order  was  unheeded,  and  when  the 
soldiers  were  through  it  was  said  that  no  one  over 
three  years  was  left  alive,  unless  their  lives  were 
bought  by  ransom.  A  certain  bishop  bought  himself 
three  times,  and  at  last  was  murdered.  The  prisoners 
were  dragged  about  with  ropes  to  beg  ransom  from 
their  friends,  like  Cardinal  Cajetan,  who  was  hauled 
and  kicked  through  the  streets  until  he  had  collected 
what  his  captors  demanded.  When  the  money  was 
not  to  be  had  came  torture.  A  Florentine,  un- 
able to  endure  longer,  snatched  a  dagger  from  one 
of  his  tormentors,  killed  him  and  then  himself.  A 
Venetian  threw  himself  backward  out  of  a  window  to 
escape  pain  by  death.  Nothing  was  sacred  to  the 
crowd  of  Spaniards,  Germans,  and  Italians,  drunk 
with  wine,  lust,  and  blood.  They  stabled  their  horses 


The  Sack  of  Rome.  375 

in  the  chapels  of  St.  Peter's,  broke  open  and  plun- 
dered the  coffin  of  Julius  II.,  played  dice  on  the  high 
altar,  and  got  drunk  out  of  the  vessels  of  the  mass. 
The  relics  were  insulted.  A  Landsknecht  fastened 
the  holy  lance-head  on  his  own  spear,  and  a  captain 
carried  the  cord  on  which  Judas  hanged  himself  back 
to  Germany,  where  he  exhibited  it  in  his  village 
church.  One  cardinal  was  taken  from  his  bed,  laid 
out  on  a  bier  with  wax  candles  in  his  hands,  and 
carried  to  an  open  grave,  where  a  funeral  oration  was 
delivered  and  the  threat  made  to  bury  him  alive 
unless  he  paid  the  demanded  ransom.  In  one  of  the 
market-places  drunken  soldiers  tried  to  force  a  poor 
priest  to  give  the  consecrated  host  to  an  ass,  and  he 
died  under  their  torture.  So  the  smoke  of  Rome's 
agony  went  up  to  heaven,  and  the  long-hoarded 
riches  of  her  luxurious  palaces  became  the  spoil  of 
the  cruel  soldiers  of  Spain  and  Germany.  The  booty 
was  reckoned  conservatively  at  over  eight  million 
florins ;  some  put  it  as  high  as  twenty  millions. 

One  month  after  the  storm  the  Pope  surrendered 
the  castle  of  San  Angelo,  agreeing  to  pay  as  a  ransom 
four  hundred  thousand  florins  in  addition  to  the  losses 
of  the  city.  But  it  was  the  middle  of  June  be- 
fore the  soldiers  could  be  induced  to  leave  the  city, 
not  by  commands  of  their  officers,  but  from  fear  of 
famine  and  the  beginnings  of  the  plague.  Their  new 
won  wealth  availed  little.  By  the  1st  of  September 
half  of  the  Landsknechts  were  dead  of  malarial  fever, 
hunger,  and  debauchery. 

The  sack  of  Rome  sent  a  thrill  of  horror  through 
the  world,  for  it  shocked  even  that  age,  when  war 


376  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

knew  no  mercy.  But  it  appears  from  letters  and 
pamphlets  that  everywhere  earnest  men,  Protestants 
and  orthodox  alike,  held  it  to  be  a  judgment  of  God 
upon  the  sins  of  the  Curia  and  that  policy  with  which 
every  Pope  since  Sixtus  IV.,  except  the  short-lived 
Adrian,  had  used  the  power  of  the  Vicar  of  Christ  in 
the  dangerous  game  of  dynastic  politics. 

Radically  revolutionary  thoughts  were  not  wanting 
to  minds  which  had  no  connection  with  the  move- 
ments of  Luther  or  of  Zwingli.  From  more  than  one 
side  the  counsel  came  to  Charles  to  abolish  the 
Papacy,  to  rule  himself  as  Emperor  in  Rome,  and  to 
shape  the  unity  of  Christendom  into  a  confederation 
of  national  hierarchies  which  should  establish  the 
reforms  demanded  by  the  laity  under  the  direction 
of  a  General  Council.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that 
Charles  seriously  considered  this  plan.  As  a  pupil 
of  Adrian,  who  had  said  that  "  if  by  the  Roman 
Church  is  understood  its  head,  the  Pope,  it  is  certain 
that  he  can  err  even  in  matters  of  faith,"  1  Charles  did 
not  believe  in  the  doctrine  of  Papal  Infallibility,  which 
did  not  become  a  test  of  orthodoxy  for  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years.  But  he  was  too  much  a  man  of  in- 
stitutions and  too  little  a  man  of  ideas  to  make  it 
possible  that  his  zeal  for  religion  should  turn  toward 
a  plan  flattering  to  his  pride,  but  destructive  of  so 
many  venerable  and  sacred  forms  and  sanctions  of 
religious  authority.  And  he  was  too  much  of  a 
diplomat  to  try  anything  which  would  have  met  such 
powerful  opposition  from  jealous  interests.  When 
he  heerd  of  the  plundering  of  Rome  he  put  on 

1  "  Schaff  Creeds,"  p.  177. 


The  Triumphant  Emperor.  377 

mourning,  and  wrote  to  princes  and  cardinals  dis- 
claiming all  responsibility  and  laying  the  blame  upon 
the  treacherous  Papal  politics  and  the  long  curial 
corruption  which  had  drawn  down  this  judgment  of 
God.  But  he  made  no  move  to  free  the  Pope 
from  the  presence  of  the  mutinous  army  constantly 
threatening  to  plunder  the  city  again  unless  they  re- 
ceived the  promised  pay.  To  the  protests  of  Eng- 
land and  France,  fearing  that  a  Council  under  the 
lead  of  Charles  would  make  him  too  strong  for  their 
interests,  he  paid  but  little  attention ;  and  in  Novem- 
ber he  closed  a  treaty  by  which  Clement  received 
back  the  States  of  the  Church  in  return  for  a  promise 
of  neutrality  in  the  wars  of  Spain  and  the  League, 
secured  by  hostages  and  the  payment  of  the  wages 
of  the  army  which  had  sacked  Rome.  In  addition 
it  was  agreed  that  the  reform  of  the  Church  in  head 
and  members  should  be  undertaken  by  a  General 
Council. 

Before  the  sum  agreed  was  fully  paid  the  Pope 
escaped  the  power  of  the  half-mutinous  imperial 
soldiers  by  fleeing  in  disguise  from  the  castle  of  San 
Angelo,  and  took  up  his  residence  in  Orvieto,  in 
want  almost  of  the  necessaries  of  life.  Meanwhile 
Italy  was  wasted  by  war  from  the  Alps  to  the  sea, 
and  her  cities  plundered  by  all  the  professional 
soldiers  of  the  world.  In  this  frightful  duel  between 
France  and  Spain  for  the  possession  of  Italy  the 
Emperor  steadily  won.  His  generals  held  the  fast- 
nesses of  the  north  against  every  effort  of  the  League, 
and  the  French  army  in  the  south  perished  by  sword 
and  pestilence  before  the  walls  of  Naples. 


378  The  Age  of  the  Renascence. 

Then,  on  the  6th  of  October,  1528,  the  Pope  came 
back  to  the  city,  escorted  by  a  detachment  of  Spanish 
soldiers.  The  streets  were  burned,  ruined,  and  empty, 
for  the  population,  which  numbered  eighty-five  thou- 
sand under  Leo  X.,  counted  now  but  thirty-two 
thousand.  Many  of  these  were  beggars.  The  minds 
of  all  were  filled  with  memories  of  loss  or  insult.  The 
glory  of  the  Eternal  City  was  dimmed.  The  whole 
brilliant  company  of  artists  and  litterateurs  which  had 
made  Rome  the  centre  of  the  cultured  world  was 
scattered  in  poverty  through  Italy,  or  had  died 
miserably  of  hunger,  the  plague,  or  the  abuse  of 
avaricious  captors.  Clement  rode  through  the  city 
under  a  chill  twilight  rain,  while  the  people  watched 
him  in  silence,  broken  only  by  reproaches  or  com- 
plaints. He  reached  St.  Peter's  in  tears. 

One  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  Gregory  had 
entered  the  Eternal  City  on  his  return  from  Avignon, 
the  descendant  of  the  typical  family  of  the  Italian 
Renascence,  the  inheritor  of  Cosimo  and  Lorenzo  de' 
Medici,  looked  out  of  his  plundered  palace  to  see 
Rome  in  ruins,  Italy  wasted  by  fire  and  sword,  and 
all  transalpine  Europe  threatening  revolt  against  the 
Church. 


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INDEX. 


Abbreviators,  College  of,  174. 

Absenteeism,  107,  108. 

Academy,  Florentine,  264. 

Academy,  Roman,  175,  202,  264. 

Acciaijuoli,  Niccola,  relation  to 
Boccaccio,  63. 

Adalbert  Ranconis,  57. 

Adrian  VI.,  election,  357;  condi- 
tion of  Rome,  358 ;  attitude 
toward  Germany, 359 ;  demands 
of  Charles  I.,  360,  361 ;  league 
against  Francis,  361 ;  death, 
361 ;  Erasmus  on,  362.  For 
events  previous  to  election,  see 
Dedel,  Hadrian. 

./Eneas  Sylvius,  165 ;  on  Ger- 
mans, 177,  181 ;  acquaintance 
with  Gregor  von  Heimburg, 
181  sq.  See  Pius  II. 

Agliotti,  Girolamo,  157. 

Ailly,  Pierre  d'.     See  d'Ailly. 

Albergati,  Cardinal,  166. 

Alberto  da  Sarteano,  157,  158. 

Albornoz,  Gil  d',  Papal  legate, 
36,  37- 

Alcala,  University  of,  332. 

Alchemy  in  Petrarch's  time,  24, 

25- 

Alcor,  Archdeacon  of,  on  the 
"Enchiridion,"  285. 

Alexander  V.,  81,  82;  attitude  of 
University  of  Prague  toward,  86. 

Alexander  VI.,  election,  212; 
characteristics,  212  sq.  ;  reform- 
ations, 214;  family  life  in  Vati- 
can, 229,  230 ;  controversy  with 


385 


Savonarola,  231  sq.,  239,  240; 
with  the  Orsini,  233 ;  excom- 
municates Savonarola,  23  5;  grief 
at  murder  of  Juan,  236 ;  reform 
of  Church,  236,  237 ;  letter  from 
Savonarola,  237;  backslidings, 
238 ;  renews  warfare  on  Savo- 
narola, 239,  240;  plots  with 
France  and  Venice,  251  sq.  ; 
described  in  letter  to  Sylvius 
de  Sabellis,  254;  lewd  amuse- 
ments, 256 ;  rejoices  at  Caesar's 
triumphant  treachery,  257;  im- 
prisonment and  death  of  Orsini, 
257;  supposed  murders,  258; 
death  and  alleged  cause,  259 ; 
not  an  atheist,  259,  260.  For 
references  previous  to  election, 
see  Borgia,  Roderigo. 

Alfonso  of  Naples,  relation  to 
Poggio,  138. 

Alidosi,  Cardinal,  murdered,  290. 

Ambrogio,  119. 

Ancona,  Cardinal,  357. 

Andrea  Mantegna  on  Prince 
Djem,  210. 

Andreas,  Bishop  of  Grain,  call 
for  General  Council,  242. 

Angelico,  Fra,  159. 

Antipope.  See  Benedict  XIII., 
Clement  VII.,  Felix  V. 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  on  Immacu- 
late Conception,  75 ;  condemned 
by  Colet,  282. 

Aragon,  kingdom  created  by 
Papacy,  6. 


386 


Index. 


Aristotle,  criticised  by  Petrarch, 
25,  26 ;  study  of  in  early  six- 
teenth century,  316. 

"Arrabbiati  "  in  Florence,  231, 
232,  241. 

Ascanio  Sforza.  See  Sforza, 
Ascanio. 

Aschaffenburg,  concordat  of,  121. 

Astorre  Manfredi.  See  Man- 
fredi. 

Astrology  in  Petrarch's  time,  24, 

25- 

Augsburg,  importance  of,  183. 

Augustine,  methods  contrasted 
with  Jerome's,  314,  315. 

Aurispa,  Giovanni,  130. 

Austria,  Italian  claims,  288. 

Avignon,  return  from,  I  sq. ; 
power  of  court  at,  8  ;  St.  Bridget 
on,  41 ;  condition  in  1381,  73. 

"Babylonian  Captivity,"  2. 

Bacon,  Roger,  more  original  than 
Petrarch,  33. 

Ball,  John,  17. 

Baptista  Mantuanus,  in  Rome 
under  Alexander  VI.,  230. 

Barabello,  poet,  322. 

Barbo,  Pietro,  172.     See  Paul  II. 

Bari,  Archbishop  of,  40.  See 
Urban  VI. 

Basle,  Council  of,  116,  119;  de- 
poses Eugenius  IV.,  120;  sup- 
presses letters  expecting,  329. 

Basle,  University  of,  272,  275. 

Beccadelli,     "  Hermaphroditus," 

143- 

Belgrade,  fall  of,  361. 
Bembo,  Pietro,  a  pagan,  324. 
Benedict  XIII.,  62,  80;  deposed 

by  Pisa,  81 ;   his  support,  82; 

deposed  by  Constance,  105. 
Benefices,  plurality  of,  107. 
Bentivogli,  287. 
Bernabo  Visconti,  36. 
Bernardino  of  Siena,  112;  attacks 

the  "Hermaphroditus,"    143; 

ridiculed  by  Bruni,  155. 
Bessarion,  164,  173. 
Bible,  in  Germany,  303  sq.     See 


New  Testament,  Faber  Stapu- 
lensis,  Colet,  Erasmus,  Tyn- 
dale,  Wiclif. 

Bienveni,  friend  of  Savonarola, 
232. 

Black  death,  16 

Boccaccio,  letter  to  Petrarch  on 
Dante,  32 ;  character,  62,  63 ; 
relations  to  Petrarch,  63 ;  De- 
cameron, 64;  place  in  letters, 
65;  against  monks,  15$;  on 
Spaniards,  176. 

Bohemia,  82,  83;  revolt,  102. 
See  Huss,  John. 

Bologna  revolt  against  Papacy, 
38;  occupied  by  Julius  II.,  287. 

Bonagratia,  n. 

Boniface  VIII.,  pretensions,  6,  7. 

Boniface  IX.,  jubilee  pilgrimage, 
60. 

Borgia,  Alfonso,  164.  See  Calix- 
tus  III. 

Borgia,  Caesar,  213,  229;  re- 
ceives palm  from  Alexander 
VI.,  234;  suspected  of  murder 
of  Juan,  238;  marriage  and 
plots,  251  sq.  ;  murder  of  Lu- 
crezia's  husband,  253 ;  new 
honors  arjd  his  supremacy,  254 ; 
murder  of  a  Venetian,  254; 
described  in  a  letter  to  Sylvius 
de  Sabellis,  254;  other  sup- 
posed murders,  255,  258;  later 
campaigns,  255  sq.  ;  revolt  of 
captains,  256;  overcomes  them, 
256 ;  treachery  at  Sinigaglia, 
257 ;  most  noted  man  in  Italy, 
257;  illness,  259;  sinking  for- 
tunes and  death,  261. 

Borgia,  Jofr£,  213,  229. 

Borgia,  Juan,  213,  229;  defeated 
by  the  Orsini,  233 ;  receives 
palm  from  Alexander  VI.,  234 ; 
prince,  235 ;  murdered,  235 
sq. 

Borgia,  Lucrezia,  213,  229; 
divorced,  238;  married,  251. 

Borgia,  Roderigo,  nephew  of 
Calixtus  III.,  195;  instru- 


Index. 


387 


mental    in   election   of    Sixtus 

IV.,   198;    head  of  opposition 

to  Innocent  VIII.,  207;  life  as 

a  cardinal,  208 ;   elected  Pope, 

212.     See  Alexander  VI. 
Borgia,  Sancia,  253. 
Borgia,    family,    typical   of    bad 

tyrants  of  the  age,  248  sq. 
Boucicault,  Marshal,  62. 
Boulogne,   Suffragan   Bishop  of, 

284. 

Bourbon,  Duke  of,  371  sq. 
Bourges,  national  Synod  of,  120. 
Braccio  Fortebraccio,  112,  113. 
Bracciolini,  Poggio.    See  Poggio. 
Bramante  at  court  of  Leo  X.,  323, 

326. 
Brant,  Sebastian,  276  sq. ;  "Ship 

of  Fools,"  277,  278. 
Brescia  claimed  by  France,  288. 
Brigonnet,  Guillaume,  317,  352. 
Bridget,  St.,  on  court  of  Avignon, 

41. 
Brothers   of  the   Common   Life, 

1 88,  189.  . 

Browning,  "My  Last  Duchess," 

type  of  Borgias,  249. 
Bruni,   Leonardo,  127,  130,  136; 

a  Christian,   141 ;    letter  from 

Poggio,  146  sq. 

Bulgaria  under  Papal  power,  6. 
Burckhardt,  quoted,  250. 
Cabala,  266,  280. 
Cajetan,  Cardinal,  374. 
Calixtus  III.,  164,  165,  193. 
Cam  bray,  Bishop  of,  281. 
Cambridge,  University  of,  354. 
Capponi,  Piero  de',  217,  218. 
Capranica,  Domenico,  164,  166. 
Caraffa,  Cardinal,  325. 
Cardinals.     See  Curia. 
Carvajal,     Cardinal,     170,     173, 

3°3- 
Catherine    of    Siena,   denounces 

Papal    legates,  37 ;    letter    on 

Papal  schism,    44;   career,  69 

sq. 

Catholic  Reaction,  340. 
Celtes,  Conrad,  273. 


Cesarini,  Cardinal,  119;  Human- 
ist,  1 80. 

Charlemagne.  See  Charles  the 
Great. 

Charles  I.,  Spain,  relations  to 
Hadrian  Dedel,  328,  329;  re- 
tires Ximenes,  334;  greatness 
of  kingdom,  334,  335;  wins 
emperorship,  338;  confronted 
by  Reformation,  339  sq. ; 
strength  and  weakness,  339, 
377»  demands  on  Adrian  VI., 
360;  triumphs,  366;  relations 
to  Clement  VII.,  367,  369  sq. ; 
to  Luther,  368;  unbelief  in 
Papal  Infallibility,  376;  treaty 
with  Pope,  377;  triumphs  over 
France,  377. 

Charles  VIII.,  France,  215.  See 
Savonarola. 

Charles  of  Anjou  holds  Sicily  as 
fief  of  Church,  6. 

Charles  the  Great,  importance  of,  4. 

Chigi,  banker   of   Leo   X.,  295, 

321,  323. 

Chrysoloras,  123,  124. 

Church.     See  Papacy,  etc. 

Ciriaco  of  Ancona,  130  sq. 

Clement  IV.,  homage  from 
France,  7-  . 

Clement  VI.,  creates  kingdom  of 
the  Fortunate  Isles,  6. 

Clement  VII.,  election,  364; 
errors,  365,  367 ;  policy  toward 
Charles  and  Francis,  366  sq. ; 
attacked,  368 ;  surrenders,  375  ; 
treaty  with  Emperor,  377 ;  flees, 
377;  return,  378. 

Clement  VII.,  Antipope,  43; 
obedience  of  University  of 
Paris,  75 ;  condemns  denial  of 
Immaculate  Conception,  75. 

Clifford,  Sir  Henry,  relation  to 
Wiclif,  55. 

Cognac,  League  of,  367. 

Colet,  John,  267  sq. ;  influence 
on  Erasmus,  282,  283 ;  evan- 
gelicalism, 310;  St.  Paul's 
school,  311;  spiritual  descen. 


388 


Index. 


dants,  English  leaders  in  Ref- 
ormation, 341. 

Colonna,Otto,  109.   See  Martin  V. 

Colonna,  Pompeo,  Cardinal,  367, 

369- 
Colonna, family, opposes  Eugenius 

IV.,     115,    117   sq. ;    opposes 

Sixtus    IV.,    201 ;    feud   with 

Orsini,  201,  205. 
Commerce,  confederacy  of,  183. 
Compagnacci  of  Florence,  241. 
Complutensian  polyglot,  332,  333. 
Conrad  of  Prague.     See  Konrad. 
Constance,  Council  of,  82  sq.,  91 

sq.  ;  close,  109;  Hefeleon,  no. 
Constantinople,  fall  of,  161. 
Contarini,  Cardinal,  325. 
Conversino,  Giovanni  di,  122. 
Coraro,  Angelo,  79.    See  Gregory 

XII. 
Corsica-Sardinia,  kingdom  created 

by  Papacy,  6. 
Cosimo  de'  Medici.     See  Medici, 

Cosimo  de'. 

Cosimo,  Rosselli.     See  Rosselli. 
Cossa,  Baldassar,  82.     See  John 

XXIII. 
Council,  General,  appeal  for,  71 

sq. ;    by   Savonarola,    241 ;  by 

Andreas,  242  ;  by  France,  290 ; 

by  Germany,  360,  368 ;  agreed 

to  by   Charles    I.,    377.      See 

d'Ailly,  Pisa,  Constance,  Basle, 

Lateran,  etc. 
Courtenay,  William,  president  of 

Council  condemning  Wiclif,  55, 

56. 

Courtrai,  effect  of,  15. 
Cremona  claimed  by  France,  288. 
Croatia  under  Papal  power,  6. 
Crusades,  under  Calixtus  1 1 1. ,  1 65 ; 

under    Pius    II.,    170;    under 

Leo  X.,  301. 
Curia,  41 ;  dissensions,  43, 69  sq. ; 

reforms    urged   at    Constance, 

106,    108;    plots,    109;    under 

Martin  V.,  114;  Paul  II.,  172; 

Innocent     VIII.,      207     sq. ; 

Adrian  VI.,  357  so. 


Da  Feltre,  Vittorino,  pupil  of 
Conversino,  123,  132  sq. ;  a 
Christian,  141. 

D'Ailly,  Pierre,  at  University  of 
Paris,  71,  72;  thesis,  72,  73; 
advocate  of  University  of  Paris, 
74 ;  Letter  from  Hell,  74 ;  Rec- 
tor of  college,  75  ;  of  University, 
76 ;  reputation,  75 ;  defends 
Immaculate  Conception,  75 ; 
advocates  canonization  of  Peter 
of  Luxembourg,  76 ;  Bishop  of 
Cambrai,  76,  78;  triumph  of 
policy,  82;  at  Constance,  92-95  ; 
contrasted  with  Huss  and 
Jerome,  100,  101. 

D'Albornoz,  Gil,  Papal  legate, 
36,  37- 

Dalburg,  Johann  von,  274. 

Damiani,  Peter,  defends  flagella- 
tion, 60. 

Daughter  of  Cicero,  finding  of  the 
so-called,  209. 

Dedel,  Hadrian,  328,  357.  See 
Adrian  VI. 

De  Haeretico  Comburendo,  57. 

Delia  Rovere,  family,  198  sq. 
See  titles  under  Rovere. 

De  Luna,  Pedro,  letter  from  Cath- 
erine of  Siena,  44. 

Democracy,  rise  of,  13  sq. 

De  Montreuil,  Jean,  177. 

De  Roma,  defiance  of  Faber,  353. 

Deschamps,  Gilles,  75. 

Deventer,  school,  187,  281. 

Djem,  ^Prince,  210. 

Domenico,  Fra,  ordeal,  243,  244. 

Dominicans,  reactionaries  in  Ger- 
many, 305. 

Donation  of  Constantine,  344. 

Dondi,  Giovanni,  25. 

Dorpius,  Martin,  opposed  to 
Erasmus,  313. 

Dringenberg,  Ludwig,  187. 

Diirer  contrasted  with  the  Ital- 
ians, 303,  304. 

"  Eagle  of  France,"  75. 

Eberhard  of  Wiirtemberg,  Count, 
279. 


Index. 


389 


Eck,  Johann,  attacks  a  reaction- 
ary, 306 ;  criticism  on  Erasmus, 
315;  on  Luther,  342;  remon- 
strated with  by  Scheurl,  343. 

Egidius  of  Viterbo  at  the  Council 
of  the  Lateran,  291. 

Einsiedeln,  319. 

Enea  Sylvio  Piccolimini.  See 
^neas  Sylvius. 

England,  under  Papacy,  6 ;  op- 
position, 8,  9 ;  peasant  revolu- 
tion, 16;  black  death,  16; 
Statute  of  Laborers,  1 7 ;  Human- 
ism in,  267  sq. ;  league  with 
other  powers  against  France, 
296;  under  Henry  VIII.,  335. 
"  Epistolse  Obscurorum  Viro- 
rum,"  307,  308. 

Erasmus,  Desiderius,  281  sq. ; 
influences  at  Oxford,  282,  283 ; 
"  Enchiridion,"  283  sq. ;  trans- 
lated by  Tyndale,  354;  op- 
posed to  "  Epistolae  Obscuro- 
rum Virorum,"  310;  "Praise 
of  Folly,"  312;  "Christian 
Prince,"  312;  his  real  labor, 
312  sq. ;  opposition  to  his 
work,  313  sq. ;  on  Zwingli, 
318;  his  edition  of  New  Tes- 
tament read  by  reformers,  341 ; 
Antichrist,  352 ;  on  Adrian 
VI  ,  362 ;  breaks  with  Luther 
and  Zwingli,  363. 

Erfurt,  University  of,  272,  274, 
306. 

Este,  house  of,  relations  to  Bor- 
gias,  252. 

EugeniusIV.,  114;  characteristics 
and  troubles,  115;  surrenders 
to  Basle,  116;  flees,  116;  em- 
ploys Vitelleschi,  117  sq. ;  re- 
lations to  Eastern  Church, 
119,  1 20;  deposed  by  Basle, 
120;  death,  151. 

Eversus,  Count,  174. 

Expectiva,  letters,  329. 

Faber  Stapulensis,  Bible  student, 
269,  270;  on  Erasmus,  315; 
work,  316,  317,  320;  friends, 


French  leaders  in  Reformation, 
341 ;  on  the  three  Marys,  352 ; 
Antichrist,  352 ;  at  Meaux, 
352>  353 !  h*s  New  Testament, 
3&3- 

Farel,  Guillaume,  316,  317;  at 
Meaux,  352,  353. 

Farnese,  Cardinal,  357. 

Farnese,  Julia,  213. 

Felix  V.,  1 20,  1 66. 

Feltre,  Vittorino  da.  See  da  Fel- 
tre. 

Ferdinand  the  Cathftlic,  328,  334. 

Ferrante  of  Naples  on  crooked 
streets,  203. 

Ferrara  follows  Julius  II.,  288. 

Ferrari,  Cardinal,  death  and  epi- 
grams concerning,  255. 

Feudalism,  13,  14,  26,  171. 

Ficino,  Marsiglio,  Platonist, 
263  sq. 

Filar  go,  Pietro,  81.  See  Alex- 
ander V. 

Filelfo,  Francesco,  137,  139  sq.  ; 
a  pagan,  141 ;  against  monks, 
155;  against  Pius  II.,  169, 
170. 

Flagellants,  60,  6l. 

Florence,  in  Renascence,  37  sq., 
43,  124  sq.,  200,  20 1 ;  sup- 
ports King  of  Naples,  206 ; 
under  Piero  de'  Medici,  214; 
promised  Pisa,  288 ;  in  reign 
of  Julius  II.,  290.  See  titles 
under  Medici,  Savonarola. 

Fornovo,  battle  of,  216. 

Fortebraccio,  Braccio,  112,  113. 

France,  alliance  with  Papacy,  2, 
3,  7,  8;  adopts  decrees  of 
Basle,  120;  New  Learning  in, 
177,  269;  invasion  of  Italy, 
214  sq. ;  Gallicanism,  241 ;  re- 
lations to  Borgias,  251  sq. ; 
second  invasion  of  Italy,  251; 
under  Francis  I.,  335;  Italian 
claims,  reign  of  Julius  II., 
287,  288 ;  war  with  Papacy, 
289,  296,  297 ;  calls  for  Genera) 
Council,  290 ;  peace  with  Spain 


390 


Index. 


and  the  Empire,  298 ;  struggle 

for    Italy,    364,    366  sq.,  377. 

See  d'Ailly. 
Francesco   of    Puglia    challenges 

Savonarola,  243. 
Francis  I.,  297,  335  sq. ;  bids  for 

emperorship,     337 ;     defeated, 

338,  367. 
Franciscans  (Strict),  attacked  by 

Humanists,    155,    156;   oppose 

Savonarola,  243  sq. 
Frederick   III.,    Germany,     166, 

167.          * 

Frederick  of  Lavagna,  8. 
Frederick     the     Pfalzgraf,     184, 

1 86. 
Frederick  the  Wise   of   Saxony, 

337.  341- 

Fregoso,  friend  of  Sadoleto,  325. 

Freiburg,  University  of,  272,  275, 
278. 

French  alliance,  319. 

Friuli  claimed  by  Austria,  288. 

Froissart,  no  desire  for  individual 
fame  in  peers  to  whom  he  ad- 
dressed his  book,  195. 

Frundsberg,  Georg  von,  369. 

Fuggers,  family,  183. 

Geiler  of  Kaisersberg,  275,  276. 

Gemistos  Platon,  Humanist,  263. 

Genoa,  ally  of  Innocent  VIII., 
206;  time  of  Julius  II.,  287. 

Gerard  von  Puy,  37. 

Germany,  opposition  to  Papal 
usurpation,  9,  10,  241 ;  Human- 
ism in,  178  sq.,  271  sq.,  302 
sq.  ;  Italian  claims,  288  ;  league 
against  France,  296  sq. ;  peace 
after  Marignano,  298 ;  in  six- 
teenth century,  336.  See  Adrian 
VI.,  Luther. 

Gerson,  John  of,  75 ;  learning 
and  character,  76-78 ;  triumph 
of  policy,  82 ;  at  Constance, 
92  ;  sermon  after  Pope's  flight, 
94;  contrasted  with  Huss  and 
Jerome,  100,  101. 

Gil  d'Albornoz,  Papal  legate,  36, 
37- 


Giles,  Peter,  311. 

Gilles,  Deschamps,  75. 

Glarean  of  Basle  on  the  Ger- 
man tongue,  342. 

Gonzaga,  family,  influential  in 
election  of  Sixtus  IV.,  198; 
relations  to  Borgias,  252. 

Gossembrot,  Sigismund,  183, 
184. 

Granada  under  Ximenes,  330  sq. 

Grassi,  Cardinal,  357- 

Gratius,  Ortuin,  307. 

Gravina,  Duke  of,  strangled, 
257. 

Greek,  study  of,  in  England, 
267  ;  in  France,  269. 

Gregor  von  Heimburg,  acquain- 
tance with  -^neas  Sylvius,  181 
sq. 

Gregory  XL,  return  to  Rome 
from  Avignon,  I  sq. ;  reasons, 
35  sq. ;  death,  39. 

Gregory  XII.,  79,  80;  deposed 
by  Pisa,  81 ;  his  support,  82 ; 
war  of  John  XXIII.  against, 
87. 

Greys  in  Florence,  241. 

Grocyn,  teacher  of  Greek  at  Ox- 
ford, 267,  269. 

Guarino  da  Verona,  123,  132, 
133;  respect  of  Poggio,  139; 
a  Christian,  141. 

Gurk,  Cardinal  of,  on  Alexander 
VI.,  230. 

Hadrian  of  Corneto,  299,  325  sq. 

Hebrews,  Epistle  to  the.  See 
Erasmus. 

Hefele  on  Constance,  no. 

Hegius,  master  of  Deventer, 
187;  teacher  of  Erasmus,  281. 

Heidelberg,  University  of,  272, 
274,  275. 

Heimburg,  Gregor  von,  acquain- 
tance with  ^Eneas  Sylvius,  181 
sq. 

Henry  VII.,  Emperor, .  corona- 
tion, 6. 

Henry  of  Thalheim,  II. 

Hercules,  Duke,  201. 


Index. 


391 


Holbein  contrasted  with  the 
Italians,  303. 

Holy  lance,  2 1 1. 

Holy  League,  289,  290,  361, 
366  sq. 

Humanists.  See  New  Learn- 
ing- 
Hungary  under  Papal  power,  5. 

Huss,  John,  against  withholding 
the  cup,  53,  104;  career,  83; 
inferior  as  a  preacher  to  Konrad 
and  Miltitz,  84;  pupil  of 
Wiclif,  84,  85 ;  relations  to 
Archbishop  of  Prague,  85,  86; 
Rector  of  Leipzig,  86 ;  excom- 
municated, and  writings  burned, 
86,  87 ;  against  indulgences, 
87 ;  voluntary  exile,  88  ;  goes 
to  Constance,  88,  89 ;  a  pris- 
oner, 96  sq. ;  sentenced,  99  ; 
death,  100 ;  what  he  stood  for, 
IOO  sq.,  145;  not  a  great 
thinker,  102. 

Hutten,  Ulrich  von,  on  Juliu; 
II.,  289,  306;  career,  306, 
307 ;  prints  Donation  of 
Constantine,  344;  "Address 
on  the  Turkish  War,"  344; 
"  The  Romish  Triads,"  344, 
345;  "The  Spectators,"  344 
sq.  ;  other  writings,  347. 

Immaculate  Conception,  Aqui- 
nas on,  75  ;  defenders  of,  275, 
277. 

Indulgences,  87,  107,  285,  286, 
308,  341  sq.,  349,  359. 

Infallibility,  376. 

Innocent  VIII.,  206;  character- 
istics and  rule,  207,  208  ;  three 
great  ^excitements,  209  sq. ; 
death,  212;  prohibits  discus- 
sion of  Pico,  265. 

Ippolito,  Cardinal,  of  Este,  290. 

Italy,  French  invasion,  214  sq., 
251;  divided  into  two  parties 
under  Alexander  VI.,  233 ; 
moral  condition,  latter  half  of 
fifteenth  century,  249  sq.  ;  po- 
litical condition,  time  of  Julius 


II.,  287;  the  Landsknechts, 
369  sq. ;  devasted, 377 ;  Human- 
ism— see  individual  titles  under 
New  Learning. 

Jacopo  Santa  Croce  murdered, 
258. 

Jean  de  Montreuil,  177. 

Jean  of  Jandun,  II. 

Jerome,  methods  contrasted  with 
Augustine's,  314,  315. 

Jerome  of  Prague,  87 ;  death, 
100;  what  he  stood  for,  100, 
146 ;  Poggio's  letter,  146  sq. 

Jews  in  Germany,  writings,  305. 

Johann  of  Wesel,  188,  190. 

John  XXII.,  policy,  9. 

John  XXIII. ,  82;  war  against 
Gregory,  87 ;  at  Constance,  90, 
92,  93 ;  flight,  93 ;  deposed,  95. 

Julius  II.,  119;  elected  Pope, 
261 ;  career,  286  sq.  ;  wars, 
287  sq. ;  at  Mirandola,  289 ; 
Councils  of  Pisa  and  the 
Lateran,  290,  291 ;  patron  of 
art,  293  sq.  For  titles  previous 
to  election,  see  Rovere,  Giuliano 
della. 

Konrad  of  Prague,  83,  84. 

La  Grange,  Cardinal,  42. 

Lance,  holy,  211. 

Landsknechts,  Pious,  369  sq. 

Lateran,  Council  of  the,  291  sq., 
300;  Papal  Supremacy,  301. 

Laura.     See  Petrarch. 

Law  in  Petrarch's  time,  25. 

League,  Holy,  289,  290,  361, 
366  sq. 

Lee,   Edward,   attacks   Erasmus, 

3H- 

Leipzig,  University  of,  86. 

Leo  III.  crowns  Charles  the 
Great,  4. 

Leo  X.,  epigram  of  Sarpi,  194; 
election,  294;  early  career, 
295  ;  magnificence  of  inaugura- 
tion, 295;  court  of,  296,  321 
sq. ;  wars,  296  sq.  ;  deceitful 
policies,  296,  297,  298 ;  con- 
spiracies against  him,  298 ; 


392 


Index. 


nepotism,  299 ;  Council  of  the 
Lateran,  300,  301 ;  policy  in 
regard  to  emperorship,  338 ; 
confronted  by  Reformation, 
339  sq.  ;  death,  356. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci  on  Caesar 
Borgia,  257- 

Leto,  Pomponius,   175*  202,  264. 

Lewis  of  Bavaria,  conflict  with 
Pope,  9,  10. 

Linacre,  physician  to  Henry 
VIII.,  267. 

Lincoln,  Bishop  of,  disinters  bones 
of  Wiclif,  97. 

Literature.     See  New  Learning. 

Lollards,  56,  57. 

Lord's  Supper.  See  Huss, 
Luther,  Wiclif. 

Louis  XII.,  negotiations  with 
Borgias,  251  sq. ;  on  Csesar 
Borgia,  257. 

Louis  of  Castile,  6. 

Luder,  Peter,  185,  186. 

Luna,  Pedro  de,  letter  from 
Catherine  of  Siena,  44. 

Luther,  Martin,  against  the  mass, 
53;  on  Johann  of  Wesel,  190; 
surprise  at  hospitals  in  Italy, 
250;  opposed  to  "  Epistolae 
Obscurorum  Virorum,"  310; 
criticism  of  Erasmus,  314; 
German  leader,  341 ;  career, 
341  sq. ;  on  indulgences,  341, 
342 ;  Eck  and  Scheurl,  342, 
343 ;  evolution,  343  sq. ;  in- 
fluence of  Hutten,  344  sq.  ; 
"  Address  to  the  Christian  No- 
bility, "347 ;  strength,  347,  348 ; 
disappearance,  348 ;  influence 
on  Zwingli,  350 ;  Antichrist, 
352 ;  Older  Humanists  desert 
him,  362  ;  his  New  Testament, 
363 ;  not  pressed  by  Emperor, 
368. 

Lyons,  Synod  of,  calls  for  Gen- 
eral Council,  290. 

Machiavelli  on  Csesar  Borgia,  257. 

Mainz,  Archbishop  of,  bribed  by, 
Spain,  337. 


Malatesta,   Sigismondo  Pandelfo, 

buries  Platon  at  Rimini,  263. 
Man,  Island  of,  kingdom  created 

by  Papacy,  6. 
Manfredi,       Astorre,       supposed 

victim  of  Csesar  Borgia,  255. 
Manfredi,     Octavian,      supposed 

victim  of  Caesar  Borgia,  255. 
Mantegna,     Andrea,     on    Prince 

Djem,  210. 

Mantua  follows  Julius    II.,  288. 
Mantua,  Cardinal  of,  357. 
Mantua,    Marquis   of,    on   dying 

words  of  Alexander  VI.,  259. 
Mantuanus,  Baptista,   on    Rome 

under  Alexander  VI.,  230. 
Marcello  of  Venice  at  Council  of 

the  Lateran,  293. 
Mariano,  Fra,  Florentine  preacher, 

218. 
Marignano,    battle  of,  297,  318, 

335- 

Marsigli,  Luigi  de',  66,  135. 

Marsiglio  Ficino,  Platonist,  263 
sq. 

Marsilius  of  Padua,  his  great 
treatise,  12. 

Marsuppini,  plot  of  Filelfo,  140. 

Martin  V.,  109;  conditions  meet- 
ing him,  in,  112;  defects  of 
character,  113 ;  adjourns  Synod 
of  Pavia,  1 14 ;  death,  1 14 ;  re- 
lations to  Curia,  114. 

Mass.   See  Huss,  Luther,  Wiclif. 

Maximilian,  271. 

Medici,  -Cosimo  de',  124  sq. ; 
helps  Ciriaco,  131 ;  relations  to 
Filelfo,  140;  to  Platon,  263. 

Medici,  Giovanni  de',  father  of 
Cosimo,  125.  t 

Medici,  Giovanni  de',  290,  294. 
See  Leo  X. 

Medici,  Giuliano  de',  grandson  of 
Cosimo,  200. 

Medici,  Giuliano  de',  son  of 
Lorenzo,  296,  297. 

Medici,  Giuliode',  357,  364.  See 
Clement  VII. 

Medici,  Lorenzo   de',   125,  200; 


Index. 


393 


confesses  to  Savonarola,   222 ; 

patron  of  Florentine  Academy, 

264. 
Medici,    Lorenzo   de'  (II.),  298; 

Duke  of  Urbino,  299. 
Medici,  Piero  de',  214;  opposition 

to  Savonarola,  223 ;  weakness, 

225 ;  in  Rome,  235. 
Medici     family      in     control     of 

Florence  in  reign  of  Julius  II., 

290. 
Medicine      in    Petrarch's    time, 

24,  25. 
Melancthon,      Philip,     poem    to 

Erasmus,  314 ;  friend  of  Luther, 

362. 
Michael  Angelo,  contrasted  with 

German  artists,   303 ;  in  court 

of  Leo  X.,  323. 
Michael  of  Cesena,  II. 
Micheletto,    hangman   of    Caesar 

Borgia,  strangles  Troccio,  258 ; 

compels    surrender    of    Papal 

treasures,  260. 
Michiel,       Cardinal,       supposed 

murder,  258. 
Milan,  supports  Naples,  206 ;  time 

of     Alexander    VI.,    214;    of 

Julius    II.,    287;    Council    of 

Pisa  transferred  thither,    291 ; 

under  Francis  I. ,  297;  offered 

Pope  by  Charles,  367. 
Miltitz  of  Prague,  84. 
Mirandola,  siege  of,  289. 
Mirandola,    Pico  della,  influence 

on  Zwingli,  318. 
Mission  preachers,  219. 
Mohammed      II.,     defeated      at 

Belgrade,   165;   victories,  170; 

death,  201. 
Monreale,      Cardinal,     supposed 

murder,  258. 
Montreuil,  Jean  de,  177. 
Moors,     conversion    of,      under 

Ximenes,  330  sq. 
More,  Thomas,   268  sq. ;    meets 

Erasmus,  282;  "  Utopia,"  311. 
Morton,  Archbishop,   268. 
Mountjoy,  Lord,  282. 


Mugnos,  Canon,  106. 

Naples,  kingdom  created  by 
Papacy,  6 ;  wars,  206 ;  in  time 
of  Alexander  VI.,  214 ;  of  Julius 
II.,  287;  in  Spanish  power, 
366. 

Neopagans,  264. 

New  Learning,  20  sq.,  62  sq., 
122  sq. ;  most  typical  Human- 
ists, 137  sq.,  141  sq. ;  relation 
to  Reformation,  145  sq. ;  first 
Humanist  Pope,  151  sq. ;  its 
effect  on  feeling  for  liberty,  161, 
272;  spread  beyond  Italy,  176 
sq. ;  in  France,  1 77,  269 ; 
Germany,  178  sq.,  271  sq., 
302  sq. ;  desire  for  distinction, 
194  sq. ;  three  chief  tendencies 
in  Italian  Humanism,  262  sq. ; 
in  England,  267  sq. ;  in  Switzer- 
land, 318  sq.  See  Petrarch, 
Wiclif,  da  Feltre,  Boccaccio, 
Marsigli,  Salutato,  Medici, 
Cosimo,  Niccoli,  Guarino, 
Aurispa,  Ciriaco,  Traversari, 
Bruni,  Poggio,  Filelfo,  Bec- 
cadelli,  Valla,  Nicholas  V., 
Pius  II.,  Cesarini,  Erasmus, 
Faber,  Farel,  Zwingli,  Leo  X., 
Ximenes,  Luther,  etc. 

New  Testament,  Zwingli's  stud- 
ies, 318;  in  Germany,  303  sq., 
363 ;  in  France,  363 ;  England, 
363.  See  Erasmus,  Luther. 

Niccoli,  Niccolo  de',  127,  136; 
helps  Poggio,  137 ;  a  Christian, 
141. 

Nicholas  V.,  career  and  charac- 
teristics, 151  sq.,  159  sq. ;  plots 
against,  160,  161 ;  death,  162; 
criticism,  162 ;  limitations,  193. 

Nicolas  of  Clemanges,  75,  177. 

Norway,  kingdom  created  by  Pa- 
pacy, 6. 

Novara,  battle  of,  296,  318. 

"Obelisks,"  342. 

Oldcastle,  Sir  John,  57. 

Orsini,  Cardinal  (under  Urban 
VI.),  42. 


394 


Index. 


Orsini,  Cardinal  (under  Alexan- 
der VI.),  leads  revolt  against 
Caesar  Borgia,  256;  imprison- 
ment and  death,  257. 

Orsini,  Paolo,  strangled,  257. 

Orsini, the,  feudwith  Colonna,2Ol. 

Ortuin  Gratius,  307. 

Oxford  University,  relations  to 
Wiclif,  55,  56;  time  of  Colet, 
267  sq.,  353,  354- 

Papacy,  past  relations  to  political 
organizations,  3  sq. ;  French 
influence,  7,  8;  taxes,  107;  Re- 
nascence Popes,  193  sq. ;  tem- 
poral dominion,  344 ;  Infallibil- 
ity) 37°-  See  Curia,  Lateran, 
Council  of  the,  Wiclif,  etc. 

Pappenheim,  Marshal  of  the  Em- 
pire, at  Constance,  100. 

Parentucelli,  Tommaso,  151, 167. 
See  Nicholas  V. 

Paris,  University  of,  centre  of 
Conciliar  party,  71,  73 ;  obedi- 
ence to  Clement  VII.,  75;  on 
the  schism,  76,  80 ;  leading  uni- 
versity, 278,  282,  283. 

Paul  II.,  172  sq. ;  relations  to 
Humanists,  174,  175;  league 
against  the  Turks,  and  death, 
175;  limitations,  193. 

Pavia,  French  defeat  of,  367. 

Pavia,  Synod  of,  1 14. 

Peace  Congress,  170. 

Peasant  revolution,  16  sq. 

Pedro  de  Luna,  letter  from  Cath- 
erine of  Siena,  44. 

Perugia  occupied  by  Julius  II., 
287. 

Peter  of  Luxembourg,  canoniza- 
tion proposed,  76. 

Petrarch,  parentage,  20 ;  at  Avig- 
non, 21 ;  services  to  classical 
literature,  21  sq.  ;  as  a  collector, 
23  ;  attacks  universities,  24 ;  at- 
titude toward  various  studies, 
24,  25  ;  individuality,  24-29 ; 
criticism  of  Aristotle,  25,  26 ; 
climbs  Mount  Ventoux,  27,  28 ; 
acedia,  29 ;  faults,  29  sq. ; 


love  of  Laura,  31 ;  honors,  32  ; 
crowned,  33 ;  true  position,  33, 
34,  145 ;  relations  to  Boccaccio, 
32,  63;  to  monks,  154;  visit  to 
Cologne,  176;  on  Frenchmen, 
I76. 

Petrucci,  conspiracy  against  Leo 
X.,  298,  299. 

Pfefferkorn,  John,  anti-Jewish 
writer,  304,  305. 

Philip  of  the  Pfalz,  279. 

Philip  the  Hardy  assaults  Boni- 
face, 7. 

Pico,  Giovanni  della  Mirandola, 
265  sq.  ;  studied  by  More,  269 ; 
Reuchlin  on,  280 ;  memorial  to 
Council  of  the  Lateran,  300; 
influence  on  Zwingli,  318. 

Piero  de'  Capponi,  217,  218. 

Pisa,  yoke  of  Florence,  226,  288. 

Pisa,  Council  of,  81;  abortive 
Council  of  1511,  290,  291. 

Pius  II.,  career,  165  sq. ;  relation 
to  Humanists,  168  sq.  ;  Peace 
Congress,  170;  crusade  and 
death,  170;  limitations,  193;  on 
Sforza,  197;  on  Borgia,  213; 
against  General  Council,  242. 
For  events  previous  to  election, 
see  ^Eneas  Sylvius. 

Platina,  174,  175,  202. 

Plato  in  New  Literature,  263  sq., 
266. 

Platon,  Gemistos,  Humanist,  263. 

Plurality  of  benefices,  107. 

Poggio,  carries  "Institutes"  of 
Quintilian  to  Constance,  129, 
137  sq.  ;  paganism,  141 ;  letter 
to  Bruni,  146  sq.  ;  attacks 
monks,  155,  156;  personal  re- 
lations to  monks,  156;  on  Lon- 
doners, 177. 

Poland  under  Papal  power,  5. 

Polyglot,  Complutensian,  333. 

Pomponazzi,  Pietro,  book  on  the 
soul,  301. 

Pomponius  Leto,  175,  202,  264. 

Pontano  on  a  cardinal  of  Alexan- 
der VI. 's,  230. 


Index. 


395 


"Poor  Priests,"  1 8,  49. 

Porcaro,  Stefano,  conspiracy,  160, 
161. 

Portugal,  kingdom  created  by  Pa- 
pacy, 6 ;  Alexander  VI.  divides 
new  West  between  it  and 
Spain,  213. 

Pragmatic  Sanction,  120,  241, 
293,  297. 

Prague,  Archbishop  pf,  83,  85, 
86. 

Prague,  University  of,  57,  83,  86. 

Prato  sacked,  290. 

Printing,  185,  274. 

Puy,  Gerard  von,  37. 

Ramiro,  agent  of  Caesar  Borgia, 
256. 

Ranconis,  Adalbert,  57. 

Raphael,  294,  321,  323;  con- 
trasted  with^the  Germans,  303, 

304- 

Ravenna,  French  victory  at,  289. 
Raymond,  Vicomte  of  Turenne,  I. 
Raynald,  Cardinal,  at  Constance, 

109. 
Reformation,  characteristics,  339 

sq.  ;    attitude   of  Adrian   VI., 

359- 

Renascence.     See  New  Learning. 

Reservation,  right  of,  107. 

Reuchlin,  Johann,  278  sq. ;  works, 
279,  280;  on  Jewish  writings, 
304  sq. ;  intellectual  warfare, 
304-310;  on  Faber,  316;  op- 
posed by  Hadrian  Dedel,  328 ; 
Antichrist,  352  ;  death,  362. 

Riario,  Pietro,  198,  199. 

Robert  of  Geneva,  42,  43.  See 
Clement  VII. 

Robert  of  Lecce,  missioner,  219. 

Robert  of  Lincoln,  8. 

Rome  sacked,  367  sq.,  373  sq. 
See  Sixtus  IV.,  Innocent 
VIII.,  Leo  X.,  Adrian  VI. 

Rosselli,  Cosimo,  patronized  by 
Sixtus  IV.,  203. 

Rovere,  Francesco  della,  198.  See 
Sixtus  IV. 

Rovere,  Giuliano  della,  198,  206, 


209 ;  candidate  for  Papacy,  212; 
second  effort  of  Sforza  for 
French  invasion  of  Italy,  215; 
call  for  General  Council,  242 ; 
reconciled  to  Borgias,  252 ; 
elected  Pope,  261.  See  Julius 

Sadoleto,  Jacopo,  324,  325,  327. 
St.  Paul's  School,  311. 
Saldner,  Conrad,  184. 
Salisbury,  Bishop  of,  at  Constance, 

93- 

Salutato,  Coluccio,  67,  68,  123, 
124;  helps  Poggio,  137;  con- 
trasted with  Poggio,  138. 

Samson     attacked     by     Zwingli, 

349- 
Sannazaro,  the  Christian   Virgil, 

325- 

Santa  Croce,  Jacopo,  murdered, 
258. 

Sardinia,  kingdom  created  by  Pa- 
pacy, 6. 

Sarpion  Leo  X.,  194. 

Sarteano,  Alberto  da,  157,  158. 

Sauli,  Cardinal,  298,  299. 

Savonarola,  addresses  Charles 
VIII.,  217,  225;  career,  218 
sq. ;  his  great  theme,  219,  220, 
245,  246 ;  fame,  220;  know- 
ledge of  Bible,  220 ;  interpreta- 
tions and  sermons,  221,  225 ; 
visions,  222,  223,  224;  courage, 
222 ;  confession  of  Lorenzo, 
222 ;  opposes  Piero,  223 ;  re- 
forms in  monastery,  223 ; 
"grand  Council,"  226;  con- 
troversy with  Pope,  231  sq., 
239,  240;  reforms  carnival,  231, 
232,233;  burning  of  "vanities," 
233>  234 ;  a  Puritan,  but  not  a 
Philistine,  234 ;  excommuni- 
cated, 235  ;  letter  to  Pope,  237 ; 
defiance  of  Pope,  239,  240 ;  in- 
tercepted letter  to  France,  243 ; 
opposition  of  Franciscans,  243 ; 
ordeal  by  fire,  243,  244;  in 
hands  of  mob,  244,  245 ',  tor- 
ture, 245 ;  death,  247. 


396 


Index. 


Scarampo,  Cardinal,  173. 

Schedel,  Hartmann,  187. 

Schedel,  Hermann,  184. 

Scheurl,  to  Eck,  on  Luther,  343. 

Schlettstadt  school,  187. 

Scholasticism,  1 1  sq. ;  attacked 
by  Petrarch,  25  sq. 

Schools,  German,  187. 

Scotland,  kingdom  created  by  Pa- 
pacy, 6. 

Selim,  Sultan,  361. 

Servia  under  Papal  power,  6. 

Sforza,  Ascanio,  209 ;  candidate 
for  Papacy,  212;  bribed,  212; 
plots  against  Savonarola,  231. 

Sforza,  Francesco,  career,  196 
sq. ;  cynosure  of  Italy,  197. 

Sforza,  Giovanni,  234,  235. 

Sforza,  Jacopo,  112,  113,  196. 

Sforza,  Lodovico,  214  sq. 

Sicily,  kingdom  under  Papal 
power,  6,  7,  366. 

Siena,  Synod  at,  114. 

Sigismund,  Emperor,  82,  86,  87 
sq. ;  at  Constance,  91  sq. ;  firm- 
ness after  flight  of  Pope,  94 ; 
betrayal  of  Huss,  97,  103 ; 
crowns  Beccadelli,  143;  only 
nominal  head  of  Europe,  179, 
180. 

Simony,  107,  108,  300. 

Sinigaglia,  Caesar  Borgia's  treach- 
ery at,  257. 

Sion,  Cardinal  of,  357- 

Sistine  Chapel  built  by  Sixtus 
IV.,  203. 

Sitten,  Bishop  of,  289,  297. 

Sixtus  IV.,  election,  198;  nepo- 
tism, 198  sq.  ;  plots  against 
Medici,  200;  wars,  201,  202; 
power,  202 ;  patron  of  culture, 

202,  203 ;   disorders  in  Rome, 

203,  204;  death,  204;  bull  on 
Immaculate  Conception,  277- 

Soderini,  Cardinal,  299. 

Spain,  Alexander  VI.  divides 
new  West  between  it  and  Por- 
tugal, 213;  Italian  claims,  287, 
288;  league  with  Julius  II. 


against     France,    289 ;    league 

with  Leo   X.,  296   sq. ;    peace 

after    Marignano,    298 ;    under 

Ferdinand    the    Catholic,   334, 

335  ;  champion  of  Papacy,  364. 

See   Adrian   VI.,    Charles    I., 

Ximenes. 
Spalatin,  letters  from  Luther  and 

Eck  on  Erasmus,  314,  315. 
Stapulensis,  Faber.     See  Faber. 
Switzerland,    New   Learning   in, 

318  sq. 

Sylvester  II.,  policy,  5. 
Tetzel,  341,  342. 
Theobald,  sermon  at  Constance, 

105. 
Theodoric   of    Niem   on    Urban 

VI.,  58. 
Tommaso  of  Sarzano,   151,    167. 

See  Nicholas  V. 
Torquemada,  Juan,   119;   patron 

of  printing,  185. 
Trans  ubstantiation.      See    Huss, 

Luther,  Wiclif. 
Travasari,  119. 
Traversari,  136,  157,  180. 
Trent,  Bishop  of,   at   Constance, 

96. 

Trinacria,  kingdom  created  by  Pa- 
pacy, 6. 
Troccio,   secretary  of   Alexander 

VI.,  strangled,  258. 
Tunstal,  Bishop  of  London,  355. 
Turks,   the,   161,  170,   171,   175, 

201,  360,  361. 
Tyndale,   William,  353   sq. ;    his 

New  Testament,  363. 
Unam  Sanctam,  "j. 
Universities   in  middle  ages,  185, 

187.    See  under  separate  titles. 
Urban  V.,  approval  of  Aquinas, 

75- 

Urban  VI.,  41,  42  ;  election  pro- 
nounced uncanonical,  43 ;  war- 
fare, 44,  45;  death,  57;  char- 
acter, 58. 

Urbino  follows  Julius  II.,  288. 

Urbino,  Duke  of,  kills  Alidosi, 
290. 


Index. 


397 


Valla,Laurentius,' '  De  Voluptate," 
142;  career,  143,  144;  on  the 
Donation  of  Constantine,  344; 
on  the  Church  and  criticism, 
302. 

Vannozza,  mistress  of  Borgia, 
213. 

Venice,  ally  of  Sixtus  IV.,  20 1 ; 
of  Innocent  VIII.,  206;  time 
of  Alexander  VI.,  214,  249, 
251  sq.  ;  of  Julius  II.,  287,  288, 
289;  Leo  X.,  296.  See  titles 
under  Sforza. 

Verona  claimed  by  Empire,  288. 

Vespasiano  da  Bisticci,  152. 

Vienna,  concordat  of,  121. 

Vienna,  University  of,  274. 

Visconti,  Bernabo,  36. 

Visconti,  Filippo  Maria,  197. 

Visconti,  Gian  Galeazzo,  67. 

Visconti,  Giovanni,  36. 

Vitelleschi,  Giovanni,  117  sq. 

Vitellius  of  Ischia,  116. 

Vitrarius,  John,  284,  285. 

Vittorino.     See  da  Feltre. 

Von  Chlum,  Baron,  at  Constance, 
96 ;  friend  of  Huss,  98,  99. 

Von  Dalburg,  Johann,  274. 

Von  Duba,  friend  of  Huss,  99. 

Von  Frundsberg,  Georg,  369  sq. 

Von  Heimburg,  Gregor,  acquain- 
tance with  ^Eneas  Sylvius,  181 
sq. 

Von  Hutten,  Ulrich.  See  Hut- 
ten,  Ulrich  von. 

Von  Puy,  Gerard,  37. 

Vulgate.     See  Jerome. 

Webster,  John,  "  Duchess  of 
Main,"  type  of  Borgias,  248. 

Werner  of  Urslingen,  35. 


Wessel,  Johann,  188  sq. 

White  Companies  of  Flagellants 
60,  61. 

Wiclif,  John,  18 ;  power,  46  sq. ; 
teaching,  47 ;  as  a  preacher,  48, 
49 ;  Bible,  49 ;  denounces  Pa- 
pacy, 50 ;  theological  views,  5 1 ; 
on  Eucharist,  51  sq. ;  death,  56 ; 
influence,  57,  58;  writings  con- 
demned at  Constance,  97 ;  bones 
disinterred,  97. 

William  of  Occam,  1 1. 

Wimpheling,  Jacob,  274,  275, 
276. 

Wittenberg,  University  of,  341. 

Ximenes,  Cardinal,  329  sq. ;  im- 
prisonment, 329 ;  joins  Fran- 
ciscans, 330 ;  Archbishop  of  To- 
ledo, 330 ;  conversion  of  Moors, 
330  sq. ;  University  of  Alcala, 
332 ;  Complutensian  polyglot, 
332.  333?  varied  labors,  333; 
crusade  against  Oran,  334 ;  re- 
gent and  death,  334 ;  limits  sale 
of  indulgences,  359. 

Zabarella  at  Constance,  95. 

Zurich,  Council  of,  363. 

Zwingli,  Ulrich,  career,  317  sq. ; 
influence  of  Pico  della  Miran- 
dolaand  Erasmus,  318;  against 
French  alliance,  319;  at  Ein- 
siedeln,  319 ;  Swiss  leader,  341 ; 
against  indulgences,  348;  Ca- 
thedral Preacher,  348,  349 ;  ill- 
ness, 350 ;  on  Luther,  350 ;  re- 
fuses Papal  pension,  350; 
against  hire  of  mercenaries, 
350;  marries, 351 ;  "Beginning 
and  End,"  351 ;  his  sixty-seven 
theses  at  Zurich,  363. 


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